KARL  LIEBKNECHT 

MILITARISM 


MILITARISM 


MILITARISM 


BY 


KARL  LIEBKNECHT 


NEW  YORK 

B.  W.  HUEBSCH 

MCMXVII 


COPYRIGHT,  1917,  BY 
B.  W.  HUEBSCH 


PRINTED   IN    THE   UNITED   STATES   OF    AMERICA 


KARL  LIEBKNECHT 

"He  sowed  the  seed  that  freedom  men  might  reap." 

This  book,  which  is  now  presented  to  American 
readers  for  the  first  time,  has  a  unique  history,  and 
forms  a  vital  part  of  Liebknecht's  long  struggle 
against  militarism.  In  September,  1906,  Dr. 
Karl  Liebknecht,  the  author,  delivered  a  lecture 
on  "Militarism"  at  a  conference  of  young  people 
in  Germany.  The  revised  lecture  was  published 
in  book  form  and  the  most  important  portions 
appear  in  the  following  pages.  For  some  time, 
the  German  authorities  paid  little  heed  to  it,  and 
it  was  not  until  April  23,  1907,  that  the  book 
was  confiscated  and  the  author  charged  with  trea- 
son. 

Liebknecht's  trial  began  on  the  ninth  of  Oc- 
tober, 1907,  and  lasted  three  days.  The  defend- 
ant was  found  guilty  and  sentenced  to  a  year  and 
a  half  of  imprisonment.  In  sentencing  him,  the 


ii  INTRODUCTION 

Imperial  Court  declared  that  Liebknecht  aimed 
at  the  abolition  of  the  standing  army,  and  that 
this  army  was  an  integral  part  of  the  nation's  con- 
stitution. In  one  statement,  made  in  the  latter 
part  of  his  lecture,  he  had  theorized  concerning 
the  possible  future  activities  of  the  troops  in  be- 
half of  the  coming  revolution,  asserting  that  these 
activities  might  be  regarded  as  the  logical  result  of 
the  demoralization  of  the  military  spirit.  From 
this  statement,  which  was  a  purely  theoretical  hy- 
pothesis, the  Imperial  Court  concluded  that  Lieb- 
knecht's  intention  was  to  injure  the  morale  of  the 
army.  The  destruction  of  this  morale,  it  de- 
clared, could  be  brought  about  only  by  forcible 
means,  and  the  use  of  such  means  was  but  the  first 
step  in  the  destruction  of  the  constitution. 

The  court  paid  absolutely  no  attention  to  the 
statement  of  the  author  that  only  lawful  means 
should  be  used  in  bringing  about  the  change,  and 
that  no  agitation  should  be  conducted  which 
would  incite  the  soldiers  directly  or  indirectly  to 
disobedience.  The  Socialist  Party,  Liebknecht 
had  maintained,  as  in  the  past,  should  energetic- 


INTRODUCTION  iii 

ally  defend  the  private  soldiers  and  the  non-com- 
missioned officers,  should  represent  their  material 
and  professional  interests  in  the  press  and  in  par- 
liament and  should  endeavor  tactfully  to  win  the 
sympathies  of  these  circles.  In  such  remarks  a 
German  Imperial  Court  discovered  high  treason! 

The  trial  was  one  of  the  most  sensational  ever 
held  in  Europe.  The  Kaiser,  it  was  afterwards 
learned,  was  kept  constantly  in  touch  with  the 
progress  of  the  trial  by  a  special  wire.  The  at- 
torney general  urged  the  accused  to  plead  guilty 
and  promised,  if  this  were  done,  to  ask  the  court 
for  clemency.  To  this  plea,  Liebknecht  quickly 
retorted,  "I  take  entire  responsibility  for  every 
word  I  have  written."  On  the  second  day  of 
the  trial,  the  defendant  declared  in  open  court  that 
he  was  convinced  that  a  verdict  of  guilty  had 
already  been  decided  on.  His  address  to  the 
judges  was  one  of  the  clearest,  most  incisive  and 
boldest  attacks  ever  made  against  German  mili- 
tarism. 

"The  aim  of  my  life,"  he  declared,  "is  the  over- 
throw of  monarchy,  as  well  as  the  emancipation 


iv  INTRODUCTION 

of  the  exploited  working  class  from  political  and 
economic  bondage.  As  my  father,  who  appeared 
before  this  court  exactly  thirty-five  years  ago  to 
defend  himself  against  the  charge  of  treason,  was 
ultimately  pronounced  victor,  so  I  believe  the  day 
not  far  distant  when  the  principles  which  I  repre- 
sent will  be  recognized  as  patriotic,  as  honorable, 
as  true." 

Liebknecht's  courageous  stand  on  this  occa- 
sion was  rewarded  by  a  sentence  of  a  year  and  a 
half  in  a  military  prison,  as  before  stated.  As 
a  sharp  rebuke  to  this  sentence,  the  working  peo- 
ple of  Berlin  promptly  nominated  and  elected  him, 
while  still  in  prison,  as  their  representative  for 
the  Prussian  Landtag.  It  was  in  the  Landtag 
that  Liebknecht  started  his  real  campaign  against 
Prussian  militarism.  His  attacks  against  the  sys- 
tem were  bitter.  Time  without  number  he  was 
called  to  order  by  the  chair;  frequently  he  was 
removed  from  the  floor  of  the  chamber. 

He  represented  the  working  people  of  Berlin, 
as  well,  in  the  Common  Council,  and  in  1912, 
the  citizens  of  Potsdam-Spandau  who  were  em- 


INTRODUCTION  v 

ployed  for  the  most  part  in  government  am- 
munition works,  selected  him  as  their  representa- 
tive in  the  Reichstag.  I  saw  Liebknecht  during 
the  great  campaign  preceding  his  election.  He 
described  the  methods  employed  by  the  govern- 
ment to  defeat  him.  The  government  endeav- 
ored to  show  that  he  was  anti-patriotic,  because 
he  had  failed  to  uphold  its  hands  in  the  Morocco 
affair.  To  this  the  workers  gave  a  deaf  ear.  The 
next  move  was  an  attempt  to  terrorize  the  state 
employes.  The  authorities  even  went  so  far  as  to 
make  a  ruling  prohibiting  them  from  voting  for 
him — on  the  ground  that  he  was  an  enemy  of  the 
state.  However,  the  dissatisfaction  with  the  gov- 
ernment was  great.  The  campaign  of  intimida- 
tion failed  and  Liebknecht  was  elected  by  an  over- 
whelming vote,  to  the  intense  joy  of  those  who 
knew  and  loved  him. 

I  saw  the  surging  crowd  before  the  office  of 
the  Berlin  Vonvarts  the  night  of  the  election,  and 
heard  the  wild  applause  when  announcement  of 
his  election  was  made.  A  young  workingman 
exclaimed  to  those  who  were  around  him:  "The 


vi  INTRODUCTION 

new  voice  of  freedom  will  be  heard  from  now  on 
in  the  Reichstag."  The  words  were  prophetic. 
This  body  never  heard  stronger  protests  against 
the  domination  of  the  civil  mind  by  the  military 
than  those  which  this  new  apostle  uttered.  He 
issued  his  invectives  against  the  armament  trust, 
and  showed  its  corrupting  influence  over  govern- 
ment officials  and  press.  He  gave  to  the  public 
the  story  of  a  late  Prussian  general,  who  lived  by 
borrowing — a  not  infrequent  habit  of  these  of- 
ficers— and  by  trading  in  government  medals  and 
positions  and  honorary  titles.  The  general  had 
been  in  the  good  graces  of  the  Kaiser,  and  the 
story  did  little  to  increase  the  prestige  of  the  lat- 
ter or  of  the  military  caste.  The  man  about  to  be 
selected  by  the  Kaiser  as  war  secretary  was  ex- 
posed by  the  anti-militarist  member  of  Parlia- 
ment as  an  ordinary  swindler  and  the  honesty  of 
the  military  group  was  thereby  further  brought 
into  question. 

Liebknecht  also  raised  his  voice  in  behalf  of 
a  German  Republic  at  a  time  when  those  who 
now  declare  that  the  only  way  to  end  the  war  is 


INTRODUCTION  vii 

by  making  Germany  a  republic,  supported  and 
encouraged  the  German  monarchy.  On  one 
memorable  occasion,  in  a  debate  in  the  Prussian 
Landtag  over  the  building  of  the  new  opera  house, 
Liebknecht  took  the  floor  and  declared:  "The 
opera  house  for  which  we  are  asked  to  vote  the 
necessary  funds,  should  last  for  many  generations. 
We  trust  that  it  will  last  long  after  it  has  lost  its 
character  as  a  Royal  Opera  House." 

This  daring  statement  brought  upon  his  head 
scathing  denunciations  from  the  majority  of  the 
members,  who  were  unable  to  imagine  how  one 
could  dare  suggest  a  republic  in  a  Prussian  parlia- 
ment. And  this  pronouncement  was  issued  long 
before  kings  and  presidents  dreamed  of  fighting 
to  make  the  world  safe  for  democracy,  for  hu- 
manity. 

When  the  European  war  broke  out,  a  meeting 
was  called  of  the  Social-Democratic  members  of 
the  Reichstag,  for  the  purpose  of  deciding  what 
stand  the  party  should  take  on  the  war.  Karl 
Kautsky,  the  theoretical  leader  of  Socialism,  was 
also  invited.  It  was,  perhaps,  the  stormiest  meet- 


viii  INTRODUCTION 

ing  ever  held  by  that  group.  The  majority  con- 
tended that  this  was  a  war  of  defense;  that  Ger- 
many was  attacked  by  Russia;  that,  although 
there  was  little  liberty  in  Germany,  there  was  still 
less  in  Russia,  and  that  Socialists  should,  there- 
fore, vote  for  the  war  budget.  Furthermore, 
some  argued,  by  this  action  it  will  be  possible 
for  Socialists  to  secure  further  rights  from  the 
government.  Should  they  take  the  opposite 
course,  the  funds  of  the  labor  unions  will  be  con- 
fiscated, and  the  Socialist  press  and  movement, 
built  up  through  long  years  of  painful  endeavor, 
will  be  destroyed.  Finally,  as  Socialists  do  not 
constitute  the  majority,  the  war  budget  will,  in 
any  case,  be  passed  whether  they  support  it  or 
not. 

A  second  group,  represented  by  Kautsky,  ad- 
vised that  the  party  abstain  from  voting  alto- 
gether. A  vote  against  the  war  budget  might 
leave  the  country  defenseless.  The  Socialist,  it 
was  understood,  would  defend  the  country  in  case 
of  attack,  especially  should  such  attack  come  from 
such  a  country  as  Russia.  Germany,  this  group 


INTRODUCTION  ix 

believed,  was  then  being  attacked  by  the  forces  of 
the  Czar.  By  taking  the  middle-of-the  road  posi- 
tion, and  voting  neither  for  nor  against  the  budget, 
the  Socialist  would  not  be  voting  against  the  de- 
fense of  his  country,  and  on  the  other  hand,  would 
not  be  assuming  responsibility  for  all  of  the  acts 
committed  by  his  government  prior  to  the  war. 
Since  then,  it  may  be  said  in  passing,  Kautsky  has 
taken  a  more  militant  position  against  the  war. 

The  third  group  was  represented  by  Liebknecht. 
"This  war,"  argued  Liebknecht  and  his  followers, 
"is  an  imperialist  war  for  domination  of  world 
markets,  and  for  the  benefit  of  bankers  and  manu- 
facturers. It  is  also  a  war  tending  to  destroy 
the  growing  labor  movement.  It  is  not  a  war  of 
defense.  It  is  therefore  our  plain  duty  to  vote 
against  the  war  budget." 

The  first  position  won  out,  and  according  to 
the  rules  governing  the  organization  of  the 
group,  the  minority  had  to  bow  to  the  decision  of 
the  majority.  It  was  for  this  reason  that  the  en- 
tire Social  Democratic  delegation  voted  for  the 
war  budget  at  the  first  open  meeting  of  the  Reichs- 


x  INTRODUCTION 

tag  after  the  outbreak  of  the  war.  At  the  second 
session  in  December  Liebknecht  was  the  only  man 
who  dared  to  stand  up  in  the  Reichstag  against  the 
decision  of  all  parties  and  vote  against  the  budget. 

He  not  only  cast  his  vote,  but  he  also  dared  to 
state  in  an  open  meeting  of  the  Reichstag  to  a 
Germany  then  apparently  victorious,  that  the  Ger- 
mans were  the  aggressors  in  the  war,  and  that  it 
was  an  imperialistic  war  provoked  by  his  coun- 
try and  Austria.  He  protested  against  the  viola- 
tion of  Belgium  and  Luxembourg;  against  the 
military  dictatorship;  against  Prussian  and  Ger- 
man autocracy.  Whether  one  agrees  or  disagrees 
with  his  position,  one  cannot  but  admit  the  cour- 
ageous character  of  the  act, — which  is  bound 
to  be  recorded  as  one  of  the  most  heroic  of  the 
world  drama. 

On  May  i,  1916,  Liebknecht  participated  in  a 
May  Day  Peace  demonstration  in  Berlin.  It  was 
on  this  occasion  that  he  delivered  the  peace  address 
which  brought  to  him  an  imprisonment  of  four 
years  and  one  month  of  hard  labor. 

"We  Germans  in  Prussia,"  he  declared,  "have 


INTRODUCTION  xi 

three  cardinal  rights:  the  right  to  be  soldiers,  to 
pay  taxes,  to  keep  our  tongues  between  our  teeth. 

"Poverty  and  misery,  need  and  starvation,  are 
ruling  in  Germany.  Belgium,  Poland  and  Ser- 
bia, whose  blood  the  vampire  of  imperialism  is 
sucking,  resemble  vast  cemeteries.  The  entire 
world,  the  much  praised  European  civilization, 
is  falling  into  ruin  through  the  anarchy  which 
has  been  let  loose  by  the  world  war. 

"Those  who  profit  from  the  war  desire  war 
with  America.  To-morrow,  perhaps,  they  may 
order  us  to  aim  weapons  against  new  groups  of  our 
brothers,  against  our  fellow  workers  in  America. 
Consider  well  the  fact:  as  long  as  the  German 
people  do  not  rise  and  enforce  their  own  will, 
the  assassination  of  the  people  will  continue. 
Let  thousands  of  voices  shout:  'Down  with  the 
shameless  extermination  of  nations !  Down  with 
those  who  are  responsible  for  these  crimes !' ' 

Immediately  after  his  anti-war  address,  Lieb- 
knecht  was  arrested.  He  claimed  parliamentary 
immunity,  but  this  claim  was  not  allowed. 
While  in  prison  awaiting  trial,  he  sent  two  letters 


xii  INTRODUCTION 

to  the  military  court,  containing  the  reasons  why 
he  opposed  the  German  government,  militarism 
and  the  war.  These  letters  are  powerful  indict- 
ments against  these  institutions  as  well  as  against 
international  capitalism — the  breeder  of  war. 

"The  cry  of  'down  with  the  war'  is  meant  to 
give  voice  to  the  fact  that  I  thoroughly  condemn 
and  oppose  the  present  war  because  of  its  his- 
torical nature;  because  of  its  general  social  causes; 
the  particular  way  in  which  it  was  brought  about; 
the  manner  in  which  it  is  conducted  and  the  object 
for  which  it  is  fought.  I  oppose  it  also  in  the  be- 
lief that  it  is  the  duty  of  every  representative  of 
the  proletariat  to  take  part  in  the  international 
class  struggle  for  the  purpose  of  putting  an  end 
thereto.  As  a  Socialist,  I  am  a  thorough-going 
opponent  of  the  existing  military  system  as  well 
as  of  this  war.  I  have  always  supported  with  all 
my  power  the  battle  against  militarism.  Its  over- 
throw is  a  particularly  important  task  for  the 
working  class  of  all  countries  to  perform ;  in  fact, 
it  is  a  matter  of  life  and  death  to  them. 

"In    partnership    with    the    Austrian    govern- 


INTRODUCTION  xiii 

ment,"  he  declared,  "it  [the  German  govern- 
ment] plotted  to  bring  about  this  war  and  thus 
burdened  itself  with  the  principal  responsibility 
for  its  immediate  outbreak.  It  began  the  war  by 
misleading  the  masses  of  people,  and  even  by  mis- 
leading the  Reichstag — compare,  among  other 
things,  the  concealment  of  the  ultimatum  to  Bel- 
gium, the  make-up  of  the  German  White  Book, 
the  elimination  therefrom  of  the  dispatch  of  the 
Czar  on  July  29,  1914,  etc. — and  it  continues  to 
maintain  war  sentiment  among  the  people  by  the 
use  of  reprehensible  methods." 

Those  letters  show  Liebknecht  in  his  true  light. 
He  is  not  only,  as  some  try  to  paint  him,  an  op- 
ponent of  this  war,  but  is  an  opponent  of  all  wars. 
He  is  not  only  committed  to  the  fight  against  re- 
action at  home,  but  to  that  against  autocracy, 
wherever  it  exists. 

On  June  28,  1916,  Karl  Liebknecht  was  sen- 
tenced to  thirty  months'  penal  servitude.  The 
trial  was  secret.  When  the  public  prosecutor 
asked  for  this  secrecy  Liebknecht  exclaimed :  "It 
is  cowardice  on  your  part,  gentlemen.  ,Yes,  I  re- 


xiv  INTRODUCTION 

peat,  that  you  are  cowards  if  you  close  these  doors. 
You  should  be  ashamed  of  yourself."  Despite 
this  protest  the  public  was  excluded. 

When  the  news  of  the  sentence  was  conveyed  to 
the  people  crowding  outside  of  the  court  room,  a 
cry  went  forth,  "Our  Liebknecht  has  been  con- 
demned to  two  years  and  a  half  imprisonment. 
Long  live  Liebknecht !" 

An  appeal  was  made,  but  resulted  only  in  an 
increase  in  the  term  of  sentence  to  one  of  more 
than  four  years,  and  further  appeal  was  denied. 
At  present,  Liebknecht  is  in  prison  making  shoes, 
presumably,  some  one  asserted,  to  help  the  Prus- 
sian government  to  stand  on  its  feet.  Sentenced, 
as  he  is  to  penal  servitude,  it  is  impossible  for  him 
to  practice  law  again,  and  his  legal  career  seems 
thus  a  thing  of  the  past.  The  German  ruling 
class  has  now  accomplished  its  object.  It 
has  Karl  Liebknecht,  one  of  the  noblest  and 
truest  fighters  for  democracy  and  freedom,  safely 
behind  prison  bars. 

In  all  his  agitation  against  war  and  militarism, 
and  against  political  despotism,  Karl  Liebknecht 


INTRODUCTION  xv 

has  proved  a  worthy  son  of  a  great  sire.  When- 
ever he  enters  a  fight  which  he  deems  a  righteous 
one,  he  throws  into  it  his  whole  being,  regardless 
of  personal  consequences.  His  unfailing  cour- 
tesy and  hospitality  are  recognized  by  all  who 
know  him.  "To  meet  him  is  to  love  him,"  is  a 
phrase  not  inappropriately  bestowed  when  ap- 
plied to  this  fighter  for  democracy. 

A  brief  sketch  of  Liebknecht  may  be  of  inter- 
est. He  was  born  in  Leipzig  in  August,  1871, 
the  same  year  that  his  father  was  arrested  on  the 
charge  of  high  treason.  He  studied  first  in  Leip- 
zig and  then  in  Berlin,  where  he  attended  the 
University.  From  this  institution  he  received  his 
doctor's  degree  in  political  economy  and  law. 

Liebknecht  began  his  career  of  social  enlighten- 
ment by  organizing  literary  societies  for  the  study 
of  social  problems.  Later  in  Berlin  he  became  ac- 
tive in  the  Socialist  movement.  His  law  office — 
he  had  three  partners,  of  whom  two  were  his  broth- 
ers— was  always  a  mecca  for  the  oppressed.  Al- 
most any  day,  waiting  in  that  office  for  Liebknecht 
who  would  reach  there  after  his  duties  were  over 


xvi  INTRODUCTION 

at  the  Reichstag,  the  Landtag  or  the  Common 
Council,  one  would  find  audiences  of  many  kinds. 
Some  would  be  there  to  consult  him  on  legal  mat- 
ters; some  were  students  from  home  and  abroad 
desiring  personal  advice  and  material  help.  Here 
was  one  looking  for  a  position;  another,  desiring 
Liebknecht's  help  in  getting  articles  published  in 
the  Socialist  press;  a  third  seeking  information 
about  entrance  conditions  at  the  university;  still 
another  anxious  to  be  spared  from  police  perse- 
cution. All  were  received  with  the  utmost  cour- 
tesy. All  obtained  a  word  of  advice  and  help 
from  "our  Karl,"  as  his  friends  call  him. 

In  private  life,  Liebknecht  has  proved  a  fond 
husband  and  a  loving  father.  His  present  wife 
— his  first  is  deceased — is  a  Russian  by  birth,  a 
graduate  of  the  University  of  Heidelberg,  and 
is  an  ideal  life  companion. 

Liebknecht's  vison  has  often  proved  prophetic. 
I  remember  well  the  conversation  I  had  with  him 
in  1912,  just  after  the  outbreak  of  the  first  Balkan 
war  when  all  Europe  was  on  the  qui  vive,  expect- 
ing momentarily  that  the  Balkan  war  would 


INTRODUCTION  xvii 

spread  throughout  the  continent.  I  arrived  in 
Berlin  rather  late  in  the  evening,  immediately 
went  to  Liebknecht's  office,  and  while  traveling 
home  with  him  discussed  the  political  situation. 
Bethmann-Hollweg  had  delivered  a  speech  in  the 
Reichstag  that  very  day. 

"This  speech,"  remarked  Liebknecht,  in  a  tone 
filled  with  seriousness,  "has  made  it  clear  to  me 
that  Germany  will  back  up  Austria  under  all  cir- 
cumstances." 

"How  long  would  it  take  Germany  to  mobi- 
lize*?" I  asked  him. 

"About  thirty-six  hours,"  he  declared.  And 
from  Liebknecht's  tone  one  could  see  that  he  had 
the  picture  of  the  world  tragedy  before  his  eyes. 
I  asked  him  what  position  the  Socialists  would 
take.  He  paused  long  and  finally  answered  the 
question  with  a  grave  "It  depends."  There  was 
something  in  the  man's  face  and  tone  that  haunted 
me,  that  now  makes  me  certain  that  Liebknecht 
then  had  a  very  clear  vision  of  the  dark  days  ahead 
for  the  socialist  movement  and  for  the  world. 
What  the  future  holds  in  store  for  Liebknecht, 


xviii  INTRODUCTION 

no  one  can  tell.  It  may  be  predicted  with  some 
degree  of  assurance,  however,  that  his  activities 
are  by  no  means  over.  The  world,  with  justice, 
expects  much  from  him  in  the  days  that  are  to 
come. 

The  foregoing  constitutes  but  a  brief  and  in- 
adequate sketch  of  the  activities  of  Liebknecht  by 
a  personal  friend  who  believes  that  in  him  the 
world  will  recognize  one  of  the  most  heroic  figures 
of  the  present  crisis  and  that  the  day  is  near  when 
all  Germany  will  proclaim  him  the  man  above  all 
others  who  "sowed  the  seed  that  freedom  men 
might  reap,"  and  that  not  only  in  Germany. 

A  PERSONAL  FRIEND  OF  KARL  LIEBKNECHT 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I    THE   NATURE  AND   SIGNIFICANCE   OF   MILI- 
TARISM     i 

Origin  and  Foundation  of  Forms  of  Social 
Domination  3 

Some  Facts  from  the  History  of  Militarism     10 

II    CAPITALISTIC  MILITARISM 21 

Preliminary  Remarks 21 

"Militarism  for  Abroad,"  Navalism  and 
Colonial  Militarism.  Possibilities  of 
War  and  Disarmament 22 

The  Proletariat  and  War 33 

Fundamental  Features  of  "Militarism  for 
Home"  and  its  Purpose 38 

Army  Systems  of  Some  Foreign  Countries     41 
Conclusions.     Russia 50 

III    MEANS  AND  EFFECTS  OF  MILITARISM    .     .     58 

The  Immediate  Goal 58 

Military     Pedagogy.       Training     Soldiers    59 

Semi-Official    and    Semi-Military    Organ- 
ization of  the  Civil  Population  ...     79 

Other   ways   of   influencing   the   Civilian 
Population    in    a    Military    Direction     82 

Militarism    as    Machiavellism    and    as    a 
Political  Regulator -90 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

IV     CONCERNING  SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  OF  MILI- 
TARISM     95 

Maltreatment  of  Soldiers  or  Militarism  as  a 
Repentant,      Yet      Unreformed      Sinner. 

Two    Dilemmas 95 

The  Costs  of  Militarism  or  La  douloureuse  107 
The  Army  as  a  Weapon  Against  the  Pro- 
letariat in  the  Economic  Stfuggle  .      .      .118 
Soldiers  as  the  Competitors  of  Free  Work- 
ers         120 

The  Army  and  Strike-Breaking    .      .      .122 
The  Rule  of  the  Sabre  and  Gun  in  Strikes  124 

Italy 127 

Austria-Hungary 130 

Belgium 133 

France 136 

United  States  of  America 140 

Canada 146 

Switzerland         147 

Norway 152 

Germany 152 

Veterans'  Associations  and  Strikes   .      .      .156 
The  Army  as  a  Weapon  Against  the  Pro- 
letariat in  the  Political  Struggle,  or  the  Rule 

of  the  Cannon 160 

Veterans'  Associations  in  the  Political  Strug- 
gle     170 

Militarism,  a  Menace  to  Peace  .      .      .      .171 
The  Obstacles  of  the  Proletarian  Revolution  177 


MILITARISM 


MILITARISM 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE    NATURE    AND   SIGNIFICANCE    OF 
MILITARISM. 

MILITARISM  !  There  are  few  catch-words  which 
are  so  frequently  used  to-day.  There  is  scarcely 
another  one  which  signifies  something  so  com- 
plex, many-sided,  Protean,  or  expresses  a  phe- 
nomenon so  interesting  and  significant  in  its 
origin  and  nature,  its  means  and  effects — a  phe- 
nomenon so  deeply  rooted  in  the  very  nature  of 
societies  divided  in  classes,  and  which  yet  can 
adopt  such  extraordinarily  multifarious  shapes  in 
societies  of  equal  structure,  all  according  to  the 
physical,  political,  social,  and  economic  condi- 
tions of  states  and  territories. 

i 


2  MILITARISM 

Militarism  is  one  of  the  most  important  and 
energetic  manifestations  of  the  life  of  most  so- 
cial orders,  because  it  exhibits  in  the  strongest, 
most  concentrated,  exclusive  manner  the  na- 
tional, cultural,  and  class  instinct  of  self-preser- 
vation, that  most  powerful  of  all  instincts. 

A  history  of  militarism,  carried  out  with  fun- 
damental thoroughness,  would  comprise  the  very 
essence  of  the  history  of  human  development,  lay 
bare  its  main-springs ;  and  an  investigation  of  capi- 
talistic militarism  would  bring  to  light  the  most 
deeply  hidden  and  delicate  root-fibres  of  capi- 
talism. Again,  the  history  of  militarism  would 
be  the  history  of  the  strained  relations  and  jeal- 
ousies between  nations  and  states,  arising  from 
their  desires  for  political  and  social  power  or  eco- 
nomic advantage;  at  the  same  time  it  would  be 
the  history  of  class-struggles  within  nations  and 
states  for  the  same  objects. 

This  is  not  even  an  attempt  to  write  such  a  his- 
tory; only  some  universal  historical  facts  will  be 
pointed  out. 


NATURE  AND  SIGNIFICANCE        3 

ORIGIN    AND    FOUNDATION    OF    FORMS    OF 
SOCIAL    DOMINATION. 

In  the  last  analysis  the  superiority  of  physical 
force  is  the  decisive  factor  in  social  domination. 
In  its  social  aspect  such  physical  force  does  not 
appear  as  the  greater  bodily  strength  of  some  in- 
dividuals; it  rather  presupposes  the  equality  of 
bodily  strength  of  men,  taken  in  the  average,  su- 
periority thus  resting  purely  with  the  majority. 
Such  a  numerical  relation  does  not  necessarily  cor- 
respond with  the  numerical  relationship  existing 
between  groups  of  people  having  interests  op- 
posed to  each  other.  Inasmuch  as  not  everybody 
knows  his  own  real  interests,  especially  not  his 
fundamental  interests,  and  inasmuch  as  not  every- 
body knows  and  recognizes  the  interests  of  his 
class  as  his  own  individual  interests,  it  is  mate- 
rially determined  by  the  extensive  and  intensive 
development  of  class-consciousness,  which  in  its 
turn  depends  upon  the  mental  and  moral  stage  of 
evolution  reached  by  a  class.  Again,  that  men- 
tal and  moral  stage  of  evolution  is  determined  by 


4  MILITARISM 

the  economic  position  of  the  various  groups  of  in- 
terests (classes),  whilst  the  social  and  political 
condition  presents  itself  rather  as  a  consequence 
— as  a  consequence,  it  is  true,  which  also  has 
strong  reactions — as  an  expression  of  social  domi- 
nation. 

The  purely  economic  superiority  also  helps  to 
cause  directly  a  shifting  and  confusing  of  that 
numerical  relation,  inasmuch  as  economic  pressure 
not  only  influences  the  mental  and  moral  stage  of 
development  and  therefore  the  ability  to  recog- 
nize class-interest,  but  also  produces  a  tendency  to 
act  in  opposition  to  a  class-interest  which  is  more 
or  less  recognized.  That  also  the  political 
machinery  provides  that  class  in  whose  hands  it  is 
with  further  means  of  domination  with  which  to 
"correct"  that  numerical  relationship  in  favor  of 
the  ruling  group  of  interests  is  shown  by  four  in- 
stitutions well  known  to  all — police,  law  courts, 
schools,  and  church,  which  latter  must  also  be 
reckoned  among  these  institutions  which  the  po- 
litical machinery  creates  in  its  legislative  function 
in  order  to  exploit  them  for  the  application  of  the 


NATURE  AND  SIGNIFICANCE        5 

law  and  administrative  purposes.  The  first  two 
act  chiefly  by  means  of  threats,  deterrents  and 
force;  the  school  makes  it  its  business  to  stop  as 
effectively  as  possible  the  channels  through  which 
class-consciousness  might  find  a  way  to  hearts  and 
brains;  the  church  has  a  most  effective  way  in 
providing  men  with  blinkers,  arousing  their  de- 
sires for  a  make-believe  heavenly  bliss  and  ex- 
ploiting their  fear  of  an  infernal  chamber  of 
torture. 

But  not  even  the  numerical  relation  thus  altered 
can  be  considered  as  deciding  the  form  of  social 
domination.  An  armed  man  multiplies  his  physi- 
cal power  by  means  of  his  weapon.  The  extent 
of  such  multiplication  depends  upon  the  develop- 
ment of  armament,  including  fortification  and 
strategy,  the  forms  of  which  result  mainly  from  the 
development  of  armaments.  The  intellectual  and 
economic  superiority  of  one  group  of  interests  to 
another  transforms  itself  directly,  in  consequence 
of  the  armament  or  better  armament  of  the  su- 
perior class,  into  a  physical  superiority  and  thus 
creates  the  possibility  of  a  class-conscious  majority 


6  MILITARISM 

being  completely  dominated  by  a  class-conscious 
minority. 

Though  class-division  is  determined  by  economic 
conditions  the  relative  political  power  of  the 
classes  is  only  in  the  first  line  determined  by  the 
economic  condition  of  the  various  classes,  in  the 
second  line  by  numerous  intellectual,  moral  and 
physical  means  of  exercising  power,  which  in  their 
turn  pass  into  the  hands  of  the  ruling  economic 
class  by  reason  of  its  economic  position.  All  these 
methods  of  exercising  power  can  not  influence  the 
continued  existence  of  classes,  as  that  existence  is 
safeguarded  by  a  situation  which  is  independent 
of  them  and  which  by  necessity  forces  and  main- 
tains certain  classes  (even  if  these  form  a 
majority)  in  economic  dependence  on  other 
classes,  which  may  be  a  small  minority,  without 
the  class-struggle  or  any  means  of  political  power 
being  able  to  change  it.1  The  class-struggle  can 
thus  only  be  a  struggle  to  develop  class-conscious- 

1  "In  the  social  production  of  their  life  men  enter  certain 
necessary  economic  relations  which  are  independent  of  their 
will,  conditions  of  productions  corresponding  to  a  certain  stage 
of  the  development  of  their  material  forces  of  production." — 
MARX. 


NATURE  AND  SIGNIFICANCE        7 

ness,  including  a  readiness  for  revolutionary  action 
and  sacrifice  in  the  interest  of  the  class ,  among  its 
members,  and  a  struggle  for  obtaining  those  means 
of  power  which  are  important  for  creating  or  sup- 
pressing class-consciousness^  as  well  as  those 
bodily  and  intellectual  means  of  power  the  pos- 
session of  which  signifies  a  multiplication  of  phy- 
sical force. 

All  this  makes  it  clear  what  an  important  role 
the  development  of  armament  plays  in  social 
struggles.  It  decides  whether  it  is  not,  or  no 
longer,  an  economic  necessity  that  a  minority 
should  continue,  at  least  for  a  time,  to  rule  over  a 
majority  against  the  will  of  the  latter  by  military 
action,  that  "most  concentrated  political  action." 
Apart  from  class-division  the  evolution  of  the 
forms  of  domination  is  actually  everywhere  closely 
bound  up  with  the  development  of  armament. 
As  long  as  virtually  everybody,  even  those  in  the 
most  disadvantageous  economic  position,  can  pro- 
cure arms  of  essentially  equal  value  under  prac- 
tically the  same  difficulties,  democracy,  the  reign 
of  the  majority  principle,  will  as  a  rule  be  the 


8  MILITARISM 

political  form  of  the  society.  That  ought  to  be 
true  even  in  societies  divided  in  economic  classes 
if  only  that  one  condition  mattered.  But  in  the 
natural  course  of  development  class-division,  the 
result  of  economic  evolution,  runs  parallel  with 
the  development  of  arms  (including  fortification 
and  strategy),  the  manufacture  of  arms  becoming 
thereby  more  and  more  a  special  skilful  profes- 
sion, and,  as  class  rule  corresponds  as  a  rule  with 
the  economic  superiority  of  one  class,  and  the  im- 
provement in  the  manufacture  of  armament  makes 
it  continually  more  difficult  and  expensive  to  pro- 
duce arms,2  the  manufacture  of  arms  becomes 
gradually  a  monopoly  of  the  ruling  economic 
class,  whereby  that  physical  basis  of  democracy  is 
done  away  with.  And  then  we  begin  to  hear  the 
word:  Possess  and  you  are  in  the  right.  Even 
when  a  class  possessing  the  political  means  of 


2  To  the  arms,  properly  speaking,  to  munition  and  defensive 
implements  of  all  kinds,  including  lighting  arrangements,  to 
fortresses  and  war  vessels,  are  added,  for  instance,  the  mili- 
tary means  of  communication  (horses,  wagons,  bicycles,  con- 
struction of  roads  and  bridges,  inland  navigation,  railroads, 
automobiles,  telegraphy,  wireless  telegraphy,  telephones),  not 
forgetting  the  telescope,  air-ships,  photography  and  war  dogs. 


NATURE  AND  SIGNIFICANCE        9 

power  loses  its  economic  ascendancy  it  can  at  least 
for  a  time  maintain  its  political  rule. 

It  need  scarcely  be  explained  here  that  it  is  thus 
not  only  the  form  and  nature  of  political  domina- 
tion which  is  partly  conditioned  by  the  develop- 
ment of  armament,  but  also  the  form  and  nature 
of  the  prevailing  class-struggles. 

However,  it  is  not  sufficient  that  all  citizens  are 
equally  armed  and  carry  their  arms  in  order  to 
safeguard  the  continued  existence  of  the  rule  of 
democracy,  for  the  equal  distribution  of  arms  does 
not  exclude  the  possibility,  as  the  events  in  Swit- 
zerland have  proved,  that  such  distribution  is 
abolished  by  a  majority  which  is  becoming  a 
minority,  or  even  by  a  minority  which  is  organized 
in  a  better,  more  efficient  manner.  The  equal 
arming  of  the  whole  population  can  only  endure 
and  not  be  done  away  with  when  the  production 
of  arms  can  be  carried  on  universally. 

In  his  curious  Utopia,  "The  Coming  Race,"  Bul- 
wer  described  in  an  ingenious  way  the  democra- 
tizing part  which  the  development  of  armament 
can  play.  He  imagines  a  stage  of  scientific  de- 


10  MILITARISM 

velopment  at  which  every  citizen,  provided  with 
an  easily  procurable  little  staff  charged  with  a 
mysterious  force  similar  to  electricity,  is  able  at 
any  moment  to  produce  the  most  destructive 
effects.  Indeed,  we  may  expect  science,  the  easy 
mastering  of  the  most  tremendous  natural  forces 
by  man,  to  reach  such  a  stage,  however  distant 
that  time  may  be,  at  which  the  application  of  the 
science  of  murder  on  the  battlefield  will  become 
an  impossibility  because  it  would  mean  the  self- 
destruction  of  the  human  race,  and  at  which  the 
exploitation  of  scientific  progress  is  transformed 
again  as  it  were  from  a  plutocratic  into  a  demo- 
cratic, universally  human  possibility. 

SOME    FACTS    FROM    THE    HISTORY    OF 
MILITARISM. 

In  the  lowest  civilizations  where  class-division 
is  unknown,  arms,  as  a  rule,  serve  as  implements 
of  labor.  They  serve  for  the  acquisition  of  food 
(for  the  chase,  for  digging  roots),  also  as  a  pro- 
tection against  wild  animals,  as  a  defence  against 
hostile  tribes  and  for  attacking  the  latter.  They 


NATURE  AND  SIGNIFICANCE       11 

are  of  such  primitive  nature  that  everybody  can 
procure  them  easily  at  any  time  (stones  and  sticks, 
spears  with  flint  heads,  bows,  etc.).  The  same  is 
true  of  the  means  of  defence.  As  there  is  not 
yet  any  division  of  labor  worth  mentioning, — ex- 
cept for  the  most  primitive  of  all  divisions  of 
labor,  that  between  man  and  woman, — all  mem- 
bers of  the  community  performing  approximately 
the  same  social  function  exercised  by  their  respec- 
tive sexes;  thus,  as  there  do  not  yet  exist  any 
economic  or  political  forms  of  domination  arma- 
ment cannot  be  the  prop  of  such  forms  of  domi- 
nation within  the  community.  Even  if  forms  of 
domination  existed  arms  could  not  support  them. 
With  armament  in  its  primitive  stage  of  develop- 
ment only  democratic  forms  of  rule  are  possible. 

In  those  lowest  civilizations  arms  can  at  most 
be  used  within  the  community  for  settling  indi- 
vidual conflicts,  but  a  change  takes  place  as  soon 
as  class-division  and  the  art  of  manufacturing 
arms  develop.  The  original  communism  of  the 
lower  agricultural  peoples  with  their  gynarchy 
(rule  of  women)  knows  no  social,  and  therefore 


12  MILITARISM 

as  a  rule,  also  no  political  domination  of  classes. 
In  general,  militarism  can  not  develop;  external 
complications,  it  is  true,  force  such  peoples  to  be 
prepared  for  war  and  produce  temporarily  even 
military  despotism,  a  very  frequent  phenomenon 
with  pastoral  peoples  on  account  of  the  warlike 
situations  they  encounter  and  because  they  regu- 
larly divide  in  classes  at  an  earlier  time. 

We  next  remind  the  reader  of  the  constitution 
of  the  Greek  and  Roman  armies  in  which  they 
find,  according  to  class-division,  a  purely  military 
hierarchy,  organized  on  the  basis  of  class,  the  ar- 
mament of  each  file  depending  upon  the  class  to 
which  the  soldier  belonged.  Let  the  reader  also 
remember  the  armies  of  the  feudal  knights,  with 
their  following  of  much  worse  armed  and  pro- 
tected squires  who,  according  to  Patrice  Laroque, 
played  rather  the  part  of  assistants  to  the  com- 
batants than  that  of  combatants.  The  reason 
why  the  rulers  in  those  times  allowed  and  even 
brought  about  the  arming  of  the  lower  orders  is  to 
be  sought  much  less  in  the  small  degree  of  general 
security  which  the  state  could  offer  to  the  interests 


NATURE  AND  SIGNIFICANCE      13 

of  the  individual  which  it  recognized  (a  want  of 
security  which  thus  made  the  arming  of  all  neces- 
sary in  a  certain  sense),  than  in  the  necessity  of 
arming  the  nation  or  state  for  attack  and  defence 
against  the  foreign  foe  as  well  as  was  possible. 
The  difference  in  the  armament  of  the  various 
classes  of  society  assured  at  all  times  the  possi- 
bility of  employing  the  science  of  arms  for  the 
maintenance  or  the  establishment  of  rule.  The 
Roman  slave  wars  exhibit  this  side  of  the  question 
in  a  remarkable  light. 

The  subject  is  also  strongly  illuminated  by  the 
German  Peasants'  War  and  the  wars  of  the  Ger- 
man cities.  Among  the  chief  direct  causes  of  the 
unhappy  outcome  of  the  German  Peasants'  War 
must  be  reckoned  the  better  military  equipment  of 
the  clerico-feudal  armies.  However,  the  wars  car- 
ried on  by  the  cities  in  the  XlVth  century  against 
those  very  armies  were  successful,  not  only  because 
the  art  of  making  fire-arms  was  in  an  extraordi- 
narily undeveloped  stage  as  compared  with  the 
time  of  the  Peasants'  War  of  1525,  but  above  all 
because  of  the  great  economic  power  of  the  cities. 


14  MILITARISM 

As  locally  organized  social  spheres  of  interest, 
they  concentrated  the  members  of  those  spheres, 
without  any  appreciable  admixture  of  elements 
with  different  interests,  in  a  narrow  space;  again, 
on  account  of  their  construction  the  cities  occu- 
pied at  the  outset  a  tactical  position  of  about  the 
same  importance  as  the  feudal  lords  possessed,  as 
Church  and  Emperor  had  in  their  castles  and  for- 
tresses (this  is  likewise  an  element  of  military  art 
— fortification) ;  and,  finally,  the  cities  were 
themselves  the  chief  producers  of  arms.  Their 
citizens  were  indeed  the  superior  representatives 
of  the  technical  arts  which  annihilated  the  army 
of  the  knights.3 

Particular  attention  must  be  paid  to  a  result  of 
the  study  of  the  Peasants'  War  and  the  wars  of 
the  cities,  namely,  to  the  importance  of  the  various 
social  classes  living  either  in  local  separation  or 
locally  mixed.  Where  class-division  corresponds 
with  local  division  the  class-struggle  is  facilitated, 

d7CJ  * 

8  The  Italian  development  in  the  XVth  century  is  also  of  the 
greatest  interest  in  this  connection  and  allures  the  investigator 
into  absorbing  studies.  It  confirms  throughout  our  fundamen- 
tal conception.  Cf.  Burckhardt,  "Kultur  der  Renaissance  in 
Italien,"  gth  edition. 


NATURE  AND  SIGNIFICANCE       15 

not  only  because  class-consciousness  is  promoted 
thereby,  but  also  because,  from  a  purely  technical 
point  of  view,  the  military  concentration  of  the 
members  of  a  class,  as  well  as  the  production  and 
the  supply  of  arms  are  made  easier.  That  happy 
local  grouping  of  classes  has  favored  all  bourgeois 
revolutions ; 4  it  is  almost  lacking  in  the  case  of  the 
proletarian  revolution.8 

The  armies  of  mercenaries,  which  existed  up  to 
our  own  time,  exhibit,  like  the  question  of  arma- 
ment, the  direct  transformation  of  economic  power 
into  physical  power  according  to  the  Mephisto- 
phelian  prescription: 

"If  I  can  purchase  stallions  six 
Are  not  their  powers  mine  a-plenty? 
I  journey  on  and  am  a  mighty  man 
As  if  I  had  legs  four  and  twenty." 

4  This  also  applies  to  the  Russian  revolution  (of  1005)  in 
its  first  stage.  A  characteristic  instance,  among  innumerable 
others,  is  the  armed  rising  in  Moscow  in  December,  1905,  the 
astonishing  tenacity  of  which  finds  an  explanation  in  the 
cooperation  of  the  mass  of  the  urban  population  with  the  fight- 
ing revolutionaries  who,  by  the  way,  were  not  numerous.  The 
tactics  of  the  urban  guerilla  method,  splendidly  developed  in 
Moscow,  will  be  epochal. 

*  The  working  together  in  factories,  etc.,  and  the  living  to- 
gether in  the  "working-class  neighborhood"  have  however 
to  be  taken  into  account. 


16  MILITARISM 

Together  with  the  further  maxim,  divide  et 
impera,  it  is  also  being  followed  in  establishing 
the  so-called  elite  of  an  army.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  example  of  the  Italian  condottieri,  like 
that  of  the  praetorian  guards  of  earlier  times, 
plainly  demonstrates  how  much  political  power 
can  be  wielded  through  the  possession  of  arms, 
military  practice  and  the  art  of  strategy.  The 
mercenary  boldly  seized  the  crowns  of  princes, 
tossed  them  hither  and  thither,  and  became  the 
natural  candidate  for  the  highest  power  in  the 
state,8  a  phenomenon  repeatedly  witnessed  in 
times  of  excitement  and  war  when  military  power 
is  readily  manipulated  by  individuals,  even  in 
our  own  age,  e.  g.,  Napoleon  and  his  generals,  also 
— Boulanger ! 

The  history  of  the  German  "Wars  of  Liber- 
ation" furnishes  important  information  about  the 
influence  of  the  external  political  situation  on  the 
development  of  armies  and  militarism.  When, 
after  the  pitiful  failure  of  the  wars  of  the  Coali- 
tion against  the  French  Revolution,  the  feudal 

6  Cf,  Burckhardt,  I,  p.  22. 


NATURE  AND  SIGNIFICANCE       17 

armies  of  Frederick  the  Great  had  been  crushed  as 
in  a  mortar  by  the  citizen  army  of  France  in  1806, 
the  helpless  German  governments  confronted  the 
alternatve  either  to  surrender  unconditionally  to 
the  Corsican  conqueror  or  to  vanquish  him  with 
his  own  weapon,  with  a  citizen  army,  constituted 
by  the  general  arming  of  the  people.  Their  in- 
stinct of  self-preservation  and  the  spontaneous  im- 
pulse of  the  people  forced  them  to  choose  the  sec- 
ond path.  Then  began  that  great  period  of  the 
democratization  of  Germany,  especially  Prussia, 
brought  about  by  external  pressure,  a  period  in 
which  the  political,  social  and  economic  strains  in 
the  interior  were  temporarily  alleviated.  Money 
and  enthusiastic  fighters  for  liberty  were  wanted. 
The  human  being  increased  in  value.  His  social 
function  as  a  creator  of  values  and  presumptive 
payer  of  taxes  and  his  natural  physical  quality  as 
the  embodiment  of  strength,  intelligence  and  en- 
thusiasm gained  a  decisive  importance,  and  caused 
his  value  to  rise,  as  is  ever  the  case  in  times  of 
general  peril,  whilst  the  influence  of  class-differen- 
tiation diminished.  The  Prussian  people  had 


18  MILITARISM 

"learned  to  suppress  all  strife  under  the  long  en- 
dured foreign  yoke,"  to  use  the  jargon  of  the 
military  weekly  gazette.  As  has  so  often  been  the 
case,  the  financial  and  military  questions  played  a 
revolutionary  part.  Many  economic,  social  and 
political  obstacles  were  removed.  Industry  and 
commerce,  financially  of  chief  importance,  were 
promoted  as  far  as  it  was  possible  with  the  ped- 
dling democratic  spirit  of  Prussia-Germany. 
Even  poliitcal  liberties  were  introduced  or  at  least 
promised.  The  people  rose  in  arms,  the  storm 
burst  forth,  the  army  of  Scharnhorst  and  Gnei- 
senau,  the  army  of  the  general  arming  of  the  peo- 
ple chased  the  "hereditary  enemy"  across  the 
Rhine  in  the  great  Wars  of  Liberation,  and  pre- 
pared a  miserable  end  for  the  world  conqueror 
who  had  undermined  the  France  of  the  Great 
Revolution,  though  that  army  was  not  even  the 
democratic  institution  Scharnhorst  and  Gneisenau 
had  wanted  to  create.  The  German  people,  like 
the  Moor  in  "Fiesco,"  having  done  their  duty, 
duly  received  the  "thanks  of  the  House  of  the 


NATURE  AND  SIGNIFICANCE       19 

Habsburgs."  The  Carlsbad  resolutions7  fol- 
lowed the  Battle  of  the  Nations  at  Leipzig,  and 
after  the  pressure  from  without  had  been  removed 
and  all  the  demons  of  reaction  had  been  let  loose 
again  on  the  people,  one  of  the  most  important 
measures  of  the  Metternich  8  system  of  perjured 
and  accursed  memory,  was  the  destruction  of  the 
democratic  army  of  the  Wars  of  Liberation.  The 
highly  civilized  regions  of  Germany  might  have 
been  ripe  for  that  army,  but  it  collapsed  abruptly, 
together  with  nearly  all  the  fine  things  the  great 
popular  rising  had  brought,  under  the  leaden 
weight  of  the  junker  barbarism,  having  its  seat 
east  of  the  Elbe. 

A   superficial   glance   at   the   development   of 

7  Resolutions  adopted   at  a  conference  of  German  princes 
and  their  representatives  at  Carlsbad,  in  1819.    These  resolu- 
tions concerned  stringent  police  measures  against  the  so-called 
demagogues,  especially  professors  and  students  who  had  the 
temerity  to  remind  the  German  princes  of  their  promises  to 
grant  constitutions  to  their  peoples,  promises  made  when  the 
princes    were    in    great    trouble.    Those    police    persecutions 
lasted  for  a  whole  generation  and  found  innumerable  victims 
among  the  democratic  elements  of  Germany.    The  period  is 
generally  described  as  the  demagogue  chase. — TRANSLATOR. 

8  Metternich,  the  Austrian  statesman,  was  the  head  of  Ger- 
man and  European  reaction.    This  evil  genius  of  Germany 


20  MILITARISM 

armies  shows  the  strong  dependence  of  the  consti- 
tution and  size  of  an  army  not  merely  on  social 
organization,  but  also,  and  in  far  greater  measure, 
on  the  development  of  armament.  The  revolu- 
tionizing effect  which,  for  instance,  the  invention 
of  fire-arms  had  in  that  direction  is  one  of  the 
most  conspicuous  facts  in  the  history  of  war. 

dominated  the  affairs  of  Germany  until  1848,  when  he 
tremblingly  fled  to  London  before  the  infuriated  people  of 
Vienna. — TRANSLATOR. 


II. 

CAPITALISTIC    MILITARISM. 
PRELIMINARY    REMARKS. 

MILITARISM  is  not  specifically  a  capitalistic  insti- 
tution. It  is,  on  the  contrary,  an  institution  pecul- 
iar and  essential  to  all  societies  divided  in  classes, 
of  which  capitalist  society  is  the  last.  It  is  true 
that  capitalism  develops,  like  every  other  society 
divided  in  classes,  a  kind  of  militarism  peculiar  to 
itself,1  for  militarism  is  in  its  nature  a  means  to 
an  end,  or  to  several  ends,  which  differ  with  the 
kind  of  the  society  and  which  are  to  be  attained 
in  various  ways  according  to  the  different  charac- 
ters of  the  societies.  That  fact  appears  not  only 
in  the  constitution  of  the  army,  but  also  in  the 
remaining  substance  of  militarism  which  mani- 


1  Bernstein  [the  prominent  German  Socialist  leader] 
wrongly  stated  in  Vie  socialiste  of  June  5,  1905,  that  modern 
military  institutions  were  only  the  heritage  of  the  more  or  less 
feudal  monarchy. 

21 


22  MILITARISM 

fests  itself  in  the  tasks  militarism  has  to  accom- 
plish. 

Best  adapted  to  the  capitalistic  stage  of  de- 
velopment is  the  army  built  on  universal  military 
service  which,  though  an  army  constituted  by  the 
people,  is  not  an  army  of  the  people,  but  an  army 
against  the  people,  or  becomes  increasingly  con- 
verted into  such  a  one. 

Now  it  appears  in  the  shape  of  a  standing 
army,  now  as  a  militia.  The  standing  army,2 
which  is  likewise  not  an  institution  peculiar  to 
capitalism,  appears  as  its  most  developed,  and 
even  its  normal  form;  this  will  be  shown  in  the 
following  pages. 

"MILITARISM  FOR  ABROAD,"  NAVALISM  AND 

COLONIAL  MILITARISM.     POSSIBILITIES 

OF  WAR  AND  DISARMAMENT. 

The  army  of  the  capitalist  order  of  society 
serves  a  double  purpose,  like  the  army  of  the  other 
social  systems. 

2  One  need  only  consider  Russia  where,  however,  entirely 
peculiar  circumstances  which  did  not  arise  from  interior  con- 
ditions helped  to  bring  about  the  result.  Standing  armies 


CAPITALISTIC  MILITARISM        23 

It  is,  in  the  first  place,  a  national  institution 
destined  for  attack  abroad  or  for  the  protection 
against  a  danger  coming  from  abroad,  in  short, 
designed  for  international  complications  or,  to  use 
a  military  catch-phrase,  against  the  foreign  enemy. 

That  function  has  in  no  way  been  done  away 
with  by  more  recent  developments.  For  capi- 
talism war  is  indeed,  in  Moltke's  phrase,  "a  part 
of  God's  world  order."  3  It  is  true  that  there 
exists  in  Europe  itself  at  least  a  tendency  to  elim- 
inate certain  causes  of  war,  and  the  probability  of 
a  war  originating  in  Europe  itself  decreases  more 
and  more,  in  spite  of  Alsace-Lorraine,  the  anxiety 
about  the  trio,  Clemenceau,  Pichon,  Picquart,  in 

resting  on  a  basis  different  from  that  of  universal  military 
service  are,  for  instance,  the  mercenary  armies.  In  the  Italian 
cities  of  the  XVth  century  militias  were  also  known  (Burck- 
hardt,  p.  327). 

8  In  his  well-known  letter  to  Bluntschli  (December,  1880) 
we  read:  "Eternal  peace  is  a  dream,  and  not  even  a  beau- 
tiful one,  and  war  is  a  part  of  God's  world  order.  In  it  are 
developed  the  noblest  virtues  of  man,  courage  and  abnega- 
tion, dutifulness  and  self-sacrifice  at  the  risk  of  life.  With- 
out war  the  world  would  sink  into  materialism."  A  few 
months  earlier  Moltke  had  written :  "Every  war  is  a  national 
misfortune"  (Collected  Works,  V,  p.  193  and  p.  200),  and 
in  1841  he  even  wrote  in  an  article  that  appeared  in  the  Augs- 
bttrger  Allgemeine  Zeitung:  "We  confess  openly  to  be  in 
favor  of  the  much  derided  idea  of  a  general  European  peace." 


24  MILITARISM 

spite  of  the  Eastern  Question,  in  spite  of  pan- 
islamism,  and  in  spite  of  the  revolution  going  on 
in  Russia.  In  their  place,  however,  new  and 
highly  dangerous  causes  of  friction  have  arisen  in 
consequence  of  the  desires  for  commercial  and 
political- expansion4  cherished  by  the  so-called 
"civilized  nations,"  desires  which  are  mainly  re- 
sponsible for  the  Eastern  Question  and  pan-islam- 
ism,  and  in  consequence  of  world  politics,  espe- 
cially colonial  politics  which,  as  Chancellor 
Biilow  frankly  recognized  in  the  Reichstag,  on 
November  14,  I9o6,5  contains  innumerable  pos- 
sibilities 6  of  conflict  and  forces  to  the  front  ever 
more  vigorously  two  other  forms  of  militarism — 
navalism  and  colonial  militarism.  We  Germans 
can  tell  a  story  of  that ! 

4  The  value  of  the  entire  foreign  trade  of  the  world  rose, 
according  to  Hiibler's   tables,  from  75,224  million  marks  in 
1891  to  109,000  million  marks  in  1905. 

5  "What   complicates   our   situation   to-day  and   renders   it 
more  difficult  are  our  oversea  pursuits  and  interests." 

6  Moltke's  views  in  this  respect  were  highly  fantastic.    Ac- 
cording to  him  the  times  when  wars  were  resolved  upon  by 
cabinets  were  indeed  past,  but  he  considers  the  political  party 
leaders  to  be  wicked  and  dangerous  provokers  of  war.    The 
party  leaders  and — the  stock  exchange!     It  is  true  that  here 
and  there  he  has  a  deeper  view  of  things  (Collected  Works, 
3,  pp.  i,  126,  135,  138) . 


CAPITALISTIC  MILITARISM         25 

Navalism,  militarism  on  sea,  is  the  natural 
brother  of  land  militarism  and  shows  all  its  repul- 
sive and  vicious  traits.  It  is  in  a  still  greater 
degree  than  land  militarism  is  at  present  not  only 
an  effect,  but  also  a  cause  of  international  dan- 
gers, of  the  danger  of  a  world  war. 

Some  good  folk  and  deceivers  want  to  make  us 
believe  that  the  strained  relations  between  Ger- 
many and  England  7  are  merely  the  result  of  some 
misunderstandings,  agitations  of  mischievous  jour- 
nalists, the  braggings  of  unskilful  diplomatists; 
but  we  know  better.  We  know  that  these  strained 
relations  are  a  necessary  result  of  the  increasing 
economic  competition  between  Germany  and  Eng- 
land in  the  world's  markets,  a  direct  result  of  the 
unbridled  capitalistic  development  and  inter- 
national competition.  The  Spanish-American 
War  for  Cuba,  Italy's  Abyssinian  War,  England's 
South  African  War,  the  Chinese- Japanese  War, 
the  Chinese  adventure  of  the  Great  Powers,  the 
Russian-Japanese  War,  all  of  them,  however  dif- 


7  Characterized   by  that   fantastic   abortion,   entitled,  "The 
Invasion  of  1910." 


26  MILITARISM 

ferent  their  special  causes  and  the  conditions  from 
which  they  sprung  might  have  been,  yet  exhibit 
the  one  great  common  characteristic  feature  of 
wars  of  expansion.  And  if  we  remember  the 
strained  relations  between  England  and  Russia  on 
account  of  Thibet,  Persia  and  Afghanistan,  the 
disagreements  between  Japan  and  the  United 
States  in  the  winter  of  1906,  and  finally  the 
Morocco  conflict  of  glorious  memory  with  the 
Franco-Spanish  cooperation  of  December,  I9o6,8 
we  must  recognize  that  the  capitalistic  policy  of 
colonization  and  expansion  has  placed  numerous 
mines  under  the  edifice  of  world  peace,  mines 
whose  fuses  are  in  many  hands  and  which  can  ex- 
plode very  easily  and  unexpectedly.9  It  is  cer- 
tainly thinkable  that  a  time  may  come  when  the 
division  of  the  world  has  progressed  to  such  an 
extent  that  a  policy  of  placing  all  possible  colo- 
nial possessions  in  trust  for  the  colonial  empires 

8  On  account  of  the  quarrel  about  Morocco  France  spent,  in 
1906,  far  more  than  a  hundred  million  for  the  military  protec- 
tion of  her  eastern  frontiers. 

9  About  the  alleged,  not  yet  fully  explained  plan  of  Semler, 
the  Reichstag  representative  of  the  Hamburg  shipowners,  to 
capture  Fernando  Po  in  the  Jameson  manner,  see  the  budgetary 
debates  of  the  Reichstag  of  December,  1906. 


CAPITALISTIC  MILITARISM        27 

becomes  feasible,  thus  eliminating  colonial  compe- 
tition, as  has  been  accomplished  in  regard  to  pri- 
vate capitalist  competition  to  a  certain  extent  by 
the  combines  and  trusts.  But  that  is  a  distant 
possibility  which  the  economic  and  national  rise  of 
China  alone  may  defer  for  an  incalculable  space  of 
time. 

All  the  alleged  plans  for  disarmament  are  thus 
seen  to  be  for  the  present  nothing  but  foolery, 
phrase-making  and  attempts  at  deception.  The 
fact  that  the  Czar  was  the  chief  originator  of  the 
comedy  at  the  Hague  puts  the  true  stamp  on 
all  of  them. 

Indeed,  in  our  own  days  the  bubble  of  an  al- 
leged English  disarmament  burst  in  a  ridiculous 
fashion.  Secretary  for  War  Haldane,  the  alleged 
promoter  of  those  intentions,  came  out  in  strong 
words  as  an  opponent  of  each  and  every  reduction 
of  the  active  military  forces  and  showed  himself 
as  a  true  military  hotspur,10  whilst  at  the  same 


10  That  is  not  disproved  because  he  declared  for  the  time 
being  against  universal  military  service,  which  is  regretted  by 
the  Kreusseitung  fthe  junker  organ],  of  November  29,  1006, 
because,  according  to  the  paper,  universal  service  would  edu- 


28  MILITARISM 

time  the  Anglo-French  military  convention  ap- 
peared above  the  horizon.  Moreover,  at  the  very 
hour  when  preparations  were  being  made  for  the 
second  "Peace  Conference,"  Sweden  increased  her 
fleet,  America  u  and  Japan  saw  their  military  bud- 
gets mount  higher  and  higher,  and  the  Clemenceau 
government  in  France  demanded  an  increase  of 
208  millions,12  dwelt  upon  the  necessity  of  a 
strong  army  and  navy,  the  Hamburger  Nachrich- 
ten  [an  important  semi-official  German  news- 
paper] was  describing  the  unshakeable  faith  in  the 
holy  savior  Militarism  as  the  quintessence  of  the 
feeling  dominating  Germany's  ruling  classes,  and 
the  German  people  were  treated  by  their  govern- 
ment to  increased  military  demands  13  which  were 


cate  the  English  people  into  a  better  understanding  of  the 
seriousness  of  war.  In  Germany,  of  course,  universal  mili- 
tary service  has  only  the  importance  to  force  the  people  to 
make  sacrifices  in  blood  and  money,  in  conformity  with  the 
will  of  the  noble  knights  of  the  Kreusseitung,  whilst  the  de- 
cision about  peace  and  war  rests  with  those  for  whom  the 
seriousness  of  war  exists  least.  They  can  even  appreciate 
democracy  for  abroad! — Concerning  the  strong  tendency  in 
England  and  America  towards  a  universal  militia,  see  p.  51. 

11  Cf.  p.  51  and  Roosevelt's  message  of  December  4,  1906. 

12  Chiefly  motivated  by  the  Morocco  conflict. 

13  Twenty- four  and  three-fourths  millions  for  the  navy,  S1 
millions  for  the  army,  7  millions  for  interest— a  total  increase 


CAPITALISTIC  MILITARISM        29 

greedily  grasped  at  even  by  our  Liberals.14  Such 
facts  give  us  a  measure  of  the  naivete  displayed  by 
the  French  Senator,  d'Estournelles  de  Constant,  a 
member  of  the  Hague  Tribunal,  in  an  essay  on 
the  limitation  of  armaments.15  Indeed,  in  the 
imagination  of  this  political  dreamer  it  needs  not 
even  the  proverbial  swallow  to  make  the  summer 
of  disarmament,  a  simple  sparrow  will  do.  After 
that  it  is  almost  refreshing  to  encounter  the  honest 
brutality  with  which  the  great  powers  at  the  con- 
ference dropped  Mr.  Stead's  proposals  and  re- 
fused even  to  place  the  question  of  disarmament 
on  the  agenda  of  the  second  conference. 

of  some  83  million  marks  as  compared  with  the  budget  of 
1906-7.  Fine  prospects  of  further  extravagant  naval  arma- 
ments were  held  out  by  an  evidently  inspired  article  that  ap- 
peared in  the  Reichsbotc,  on  December  21,  1906.  To  all  that 
must  be  added  the  enormous  expenses  for  colonial  wars  (454 
millions  for  the  China  Expedition,  490  millions  already  for 
the  rebellion  in  Southwest  Africa,  2  millions  for  the  rebellion 
in  East  Africa,  etc.)  ;  the  question  of  footing  those  bills  led, 
in  December,  1906,  to  a  conflict  and  the  dissolution  of  the 
Reichstag. 

14  See  Berliner  Tagcblatt  of  October  27,  1906.  Note  above 
all  the  notorious  resolution  handed  in  by  Ablass,  December 
13,  1906,  and  the  Liberal  platform  for  the  Reichstag  elections 
of  January  25,  1907. 

*'•  La  Revue,  October  i,  1906.  The  "actual  results  achieved" 
by  the  movement  for  disarmament,  are  a  well  preserved  se- 
cret of  the  editorial  board  of  the  Revue. 


30  MILITARISM 

A  few  more  remarks  must  be  made  about  the 
third  offspring  of  capitalism  on  the  military  side, 
viz.,  colonial  militarism.  The  colonial  army  (by 
this  is  meant  not  the  colonial  militia,16  as  planned 
for  German  Southwest  Africa,  still  less  the  en- 
tirely different  militia  of  the  almost  independent 
British  colonies)  is  of  extraordinarily  great  im- 
portance for  England,  and  its  importance  is  also 
increasing  for  the  other  civilized  countries. 
Whilst  for  England  it  not  only  fulfils  the  task  of 
oppressing  and  keeping  in  check  the  colonial  "in- 
terior enemy,"  i.  e.,  the  natives  of  the  colonies,  but 
also  constitutes  a  weapon  against  the  exterior  colo- 
nial enemy,  Russia,  for  instance,  it  serves  the  other 
colonizing  powers,  especially  America  and  Ger- 
many, often  under  the  names  of  "Schutztruppe" 
(protective  troops)  or  foreign  legion,17  almost  ex- 

16  Germany's  colonial  expenditure  is  in  a  greatly  preponder- 
ating measure  of  a  military  nature,  even  according  to  Dem- 
burg's  memorial  of  October,  19x16,  in  spite  of  all  his  cooking 
of  accounts. 

17  Since  December  31,  1900,  France  possesses  a  real  colonial 
army   which   has   brought   her   the   saddest   disappointments. 
See   the   Hamburg   Correspondent,   December   7,    1906    (No. 
621),  also  note  18  on  next  page  and  p.  72.    In  Germany  they 
are  busily  engaged  in  creating  a  colonial  army.    We  are  ap- 
proaching it  at  the  double  quick. 


CAPITALISTIC  MILITARISM         31 

clusively  for  the  first  named  purpose,  that  of 
driving  the  miserable  natives  to  slave  in  the  bag- 
nios for  capitalism,  and  to  shoot  and  cut  them 
down  and  starve  them  without  pity  whenever  they 
attempt  to  protect  their  country  against  the 
foreign  conquerors  and  extortioners.  The  colo- 
nial army,  which  frequently  consists  of  the  scum 
of  the  European  population,18  is  the  most  brutal 
and  abominable  of  all  the  tools  employed  by  our 
capitalistic  states.  There  is  hardly  a  crime  which 
colonial  militarism  and  savage  tropical  brutality 
[Tropenkoller,  the  Germans  call  it],  directly  cul- 
tivated by  it,  have  not  produced.19  The  names  of 
Tippelskirch,  Woermann,  Podbielski,  Leist,  Weh- 
lau,  Peters,  Ahrenberg,  and  others  testify  and 
prove  it  for  Germany,  too.  They  are  the  fruit  by 
which  the  nature  of  the  policy  of  colonization  can 

18  See  Peroz,  France  et  Japan  en  Indochine;  Fanin,  I'armce 
colonial? ;    E.    Reclus,    in    his    Pafriotismc    et    Colonisation; 
Daumig,  Schlachtopfer  des  Militarismus,  in  Neue  Zeit,  vol. 
99/00,  p.  365,  about  the  bataillons  d'Afrique,  p.  369.    Regard- 
ing   Germany    see   the    speech    of    Roeren,    member   of    the 
Reichstag,  of  December  3,  1906,  Reichstag  debates. 

19  Military  punishment,  too,  here  adopts  a  peculiarly  brutal 
form.    About  France's  foreign  legion  and  bataillons  d'Afrique 
see  Daumig,  cited  above ;  about  the  abolition  of  the  "biribiri," 
P-  53- 


32  MILITARISM 

be  known,  that  colonial  policy  which,  pretend- 
ing *>  to  spread  Christianity  of  civilization  or  to 
protect  national  honor,  piously  practises  usury  and 
fraud  for  the  advantage  of  capitalists  interested 
in  colonies;  which  murders  and  violates  defence- 
less human  beings,  burns  down  the  possessions  of 
the  defenceless,  robbing  and  pillaging  them, 
mocking  and  disgracing  Christianity  and  civiliza- 


20Th*is  hypocritical  and,  at  the  same  time,  shamefaced  ex- 
cuse is  now  being  dropped  with  frank  cynicism;  see  the  arti- 
cle, signed  by  G.  B.,  in  the  monthly  magazine,  Die  deutschen 
Kolonien  (October,  1906),  and  the  remark  made  by  Strantz 
at  the  pan-German  convention  (September,  1906),  where  he 
said:  "In  the  colonies  we  don't  want  to  convert  people  into 
Christians ;  they  are  to  work  for  us.  This  humanitarian  sof t- 
headedness  is  downright  ridiculous.  German  sentimentality 
has  deprived  us  of  a  man  like  Peters."  Again,  Heinrich 
Hartert  wrote  in  the  Tag,  December  21,  1906,  that  it  is  "the 
duty  of  the  missions  ...  to  adapt  themselves  to  given  cir- 
cumstances"; but  they  had  succeeded  "in  frequently  becom- 
ing a  nuisance  to  the  commercial  man."  It  is  at  this  point 
that  the  principal  friction  arises  between  the  German  Clerical 
Party  and  the  Government  in  regard  to  colonial  policy;  this 
alone  explains  the  furious  fight  entered  upon  in  December, 
1906,  by  the  merchant  Dernburg  against  the  so-called  col- 
lateral government  of  the  Clerical  Party. — For  America  the 
Kreusseitung  (September  29,  1906)  preaches:  "The  simple 
extermination  of  whole  tribes  of  Indians  is  so  inhuman  and 
unchristian  that  it  cannot  be  defended  under  any  circum- 
stances, especially  as  it  is  in  no  way  a  question  of  existence 
for  the  Americans."  But  where  it  is  such  a  question  whole 
tribes  may  be  "exterminated"  even  by  the  believer  in  Christian 
charity — according  to  the  views  of  the  colonial  Christian. 


CAPITALISTIC  MILITARISM        33 

tion.21  Even  the  fame  of  a  Cortez  or  a  Pizarro 
fades  before  India  and  Tongking,  the  Congo,  Ger- 
man Southwest  Africa  and  the  Philippines. 

THE    PROLETARIAT    AND    WAR. 

If  the  function  of  militarism  was  above  denned 
as  being  a  national  one  directed  against  the  for- 
eign enemy  it  must  not  be  understood  to  mean 
that  it  is  a  function  answering  the  interests, 
welfare  and  wishes  of  the  capitalistically  gov- 
erned and  exploited  peoples.  The  proletariat  of 
the  whole  world  can  not  expect  any  profit  from 
the  policies  which  make  necessary  the  "militarism 
for  abroad";  its  interests  are  most  sharply  op- 
posed to  such  policies.  Directly  or  indirectly 
those  policies  serve  the  exploiting  interests  of  the 
ruling  classes  of  capitalism.  They  are  policies 
which  prepare  more  or  less  skilfully,  the  way  for 
the  world-wide  expansion  of  the  wildly  anarchical 
mode  of  production  and  the  senseless  and  mur- 
derous competition  of  capitalism,  in  which  process 

21  See  the  memorable  debates  of  the  German  Reichstag  be- 
tween November  28  and  December  4,  1906,  where  the  "  abscess 
was  lanced." 


34  MILITARISM 

all  the  duties  of  civilized  man  towards  the  less 
developed  peoples  are  flung  aside;  and  yet  noth- 
ing is  really  attained  except  an  insane  imperiling 
of  the  whole  existence  of  our  civilization  in  conse- 
quence of  the  warlike  world  complications  that 
are  conjured  up.  The  working-class,  too.  wel- 
come the  immense  economic  developments  of  our 
days.  But  they  also  know  that  this  economic  de- 
velopment could  be  carried  on  peacefully  without 
the  mailed  fist,  without  militarism  and  navalism, 
without  the  trident  being  in  our  hand  and  with- 
out the  barbarities  of  our  colonial  system,  if  only 
sensibly  managed  communities  were  to  carry  it  on 
according  to  international  understandings  and  in 
conformity  with  the  duties  and  interests  of  civil- 
ization. They  knew  that  our  world  policy  largely 
explains  itself  as  an  attempt  to  fight  down  and 
confuse  forcibly  and  clumsily  the  social  and  politi- 
cal home  problems  confronting  the  ruling  classes, 
in  short,  as  an  attempt  at  a  policy  of  deceptions 
and  misleadings  such  as  Napoleon  III.  was  a  mas- 
ter of.  They  know  that  the  enemies  of  the  work- 
ing-class love  to  make  their  pots  boil  over  the 


CAPITALISTIC  MILITARISM        35 

fires  of  narrow-minded  jingoism;  that  the  fear  of 
war  in  1887,  unscrupulously  engineered  by  Bis- 
marck, did  excellent  service  to  the  most  dangerous 
forces  of  reaction;  that  according  to  a  nice  little 
plan,  lately  revealed,22  and  hatched  by  a  number 
of  highly  placed  personages,  the  Reichstag  suf- 
frage was  to  be  niched  from  the  German  people  in 
the  excitement  of  jingoism,  "after  the  return  of  a 
victorious  army."  They  know  that  the  advan- 
tages of  the  economic  development  which  those 
policies  attempt  to  exploit,  especially  all  the  ad- 
vantages of  our  colonial  policies,  flow  into  the 
ample  pockets  of  the  exploiting  class,  of  capi- 
talism, the  arch-enemy  of  the  proletariat.  They 
know  that  the  wars  the  ruling  classes  engage  in  for 
their  own  purposes  demand  of  the  working-class 
the  most  terrible  sacrifice  of  blood  and  treasure,23 
for  which  they  are  recompensed,  after  the  work 
has  been  done,  by  miserable  pensions,  beggarly 
grants  to  war  invalids,  street  organs  and  kicks. 


22  See  Hamburger  Nachrichten,  November  3,  1906. 

23  The  number  of  the  victims  of  the  wars  between  1799  and 
1904    (excluding   the   Russo-Japanese   War)    is   estimated   at 
about  15,000,000  men  killed. 


36  MILITARISM 

They  know  that  after  every  war  a  veritable  mud- 
volcano  of  Hunnic  brutality  and  baseness  sends 
its  floods  over  the  nations  participating  in  it,  re- 
barbarizing  all  civilization  for  years.24  The 
worker  knows  that  the  fatherland  for  which  he 
is  to  fight  is  not  his  fatherland;  that  there  is  only 
one  real  enemy  for  the  proletariat  of  every  coun- 
try— the  capitalist  class  who  oppresses  and  ex- 
ploits the  proletariat;  that  the  proletariat  of  every 
country  is  by  its  most  vital  interests  closely  bound 
to  the  proletariat  of  every  other  country;  that  all 
national  interests  recede  before  the  common  inter- 
ests of  the  international  proletariat;  and  that  the 
international  coalition  of  exploiters  and  oppressors 
must  be  opposed  by  the  international  coalition  of 
the  exploited  and  oppressed.  He  knows  that  the 
proletarians,  if  they  were  to  be  employed  in  a  war, 
would  be  led  to  fight  against  their  own  brethren 
and  the  members  of  their  own  class,  and  thus 
against  their  own  interests.  The  class-conscious 
proletarian  therefore  not  only  frowns  upon  that 

24  Cf.  Moltke,  p.  24,  note  6,  of  this  book,  and  "Moltke's 
Collected  Works,"  II,  p.  288.  In  his  opinion  war  is  supposed 
to  promote  virtue  and  efficiency,  especially  moral  energy. 


CAPITALISTIC  MILITARISM        37 

international  purpose  of  the  army  and  the  entire 
capitalist  policy  of  expansion,  he  is  fighting  them 
earnestly  and  with  understanding.  To  the  pro- 
letariat fails  the  chief  task  of  fighting  militarism 
in  that  direction,  too,  to  the  utmost,  and  it  is  more 
and  more  becoming  conscious  of  that  task,  which 
is  shown  by  the  international  congresses;  by  the 
exchange  of  protestations  of  solidarity  between 
the  German  and  French  Socialists  at  the  outbreak 
of  the  Franco-German  War  of  1870,  between  the 
Spanish  and  American  Socialists  at  the  outbreak 
of  the  war  about  Cuba,  between  the  Russian  and 
Japanese  Socialists  at  the  outbreak  of  the  war  in 
eastern  Asia  in  1904;  and  by  the  resolution  to  de- 
clare a  general  strike  in  case  of  war  between 
Sweden  and  Norway,  adopted  by  the  Swedish 
Social  Democrats.  It  was  further  shown  by  the 
parliamentary  attitude  of  the  German  Social 
Democracy  towards  the  war  credits  of  1870  and 
during  the  Morocco  conflict,  as  also  by  the  atti- 
tude taken  up  by  the  class-conscious  proletariat 
towards  intervention  in  Russia. 


38  MILITARISM 

FUNDAMENTAL    FEATURES   OF    "MILITARISM 
FOR   HOME"    AND    ITS    PURPOSE. 

Militarism  does  not  only  serve  for  defence  and 
attack  against  the  foreign  enemy;  it  has  a  second 
task,25  one  which  is  being  brought  out  ever  more 
clearly  with  the  growing  accentuation  of  class  an- 
tagonism, defining  ever  more  clearly  the  form  and 
nature  of  militarism,  viz.,  that  of  protecting  the 
existing  state  of  society,  that  of  being  a  pillar  of 
capitalism  and  all  reactionary  forces  in  the  war  of 
liberation  engaged  in  by  the  working-class.  Here 
it  shows  itself  purely  as  a  weapon  in  the  class 
struggle,  a  weapon  in  the  hands  of  the  ruling 
classes,  serving,  in  conjunction  with  the  police  and 
law-courts,  school  and  church,  the  purpose  of  ob- 
structing the  development  of  class-consciousness 
and  of  securing,  besides,  at  all  costs  to  a  minority 
the  dominating  position  in  the  state  and  the  lib- 
erty of  exploiting  their  fellow-men,  even  against 
the  enlightened  will  of  the  majority  of  the  people. 

83  That  task  of  bolstering  up  the  existing  interior  order  of 
things  devolves  upon  militarism  not  only  in  the  capitalist 
order  of  society,  but  in  all  societies  based  upon  class-division. 


CAPITALISTIC  MILITARISM        39 

This  is  modern  militarism,  which  attempts 
nothing  less  than  squaring  the  circle,  which  arms 
the  people  against  the  people  itself;  which,  by  try- 
ing with  all  means  to  force  upon  social  division  an 
artificial  division  according  to  ages,  makes  bold  to 
turn  the  workman  into  an  oppressor  and  an  enemy, 
into  a  murderer  of  members  of  his  own  class  and 
his  friends,  of  his  parents,  sisters  and  brothers  and 
children,  into  a  murderer  of  his  own  past  and 
future;  which  pretends  to  be  democratic  and  des- 
potic, enlightened  and  mechanical,  popular  and 
anti-popular  at  the  same  time. 

It  must,  however,  not  be  forgotten  that  mili- 
tarism can  also  turn  the  point  of  its  sword  against 
the  interior  national,  and  even  the  interior  28  re- 
ligious "enemy"  (in  Germany,  for  instance, 
against  the  Poles,27  Alsatians  and  Danes),  and 
can  moreover  be  employed  in  conflicts  among  the 
non-proletarian  classes;  that  militarism  is  a  highly 
polymorphous  phenomenon,  capable  of  many 


86  See  the  struggle  between  the  French  state  and  church  dur- 
ing the  conflict  of  December,  1006. 

"  See  the  disorders  during  the  election  in  Upper  Silesia  in 
1903- 


40  MILITARISM 

changes;  and  that  the  Prusso-German  militarism 
has  attained  a  peculiarly  flourishing  state  in  con- 
sequence of  the  peculiar  semi-absolutist,  feudal- 
bureaucratic  conditions  of  Germany.  This 
Prusso-German  militarism  is  endowed  with  all  the 
bad  and  dangerous  qualities  of  any  form  of  capi- 
talist militarism,  so  that  it  is  best  suited  to  serve 
as  a  paradigm  for  showing  militarism  in  its  pres- 
ent stage,  in  its  forms,  means  and  effects.  As 
nobody  has  as  yet  succeeded,  to  use  a  Bismarckian 
phrase,  in  imitating  our  Prussian  lieutenants, 
nobody  has  as  yet  been  fully  able  to  imitate  our 
Prusso-German  militarism,  which  has  not  only 
become  a  state  within-  the  state,  but  positively  a 
state  above  the  state. 

Let  us  first  consider  the  army  systems  of  some 
other  countries.  In  doing  so  we  must  take  into 
consideration  not  only  the  army  proper,  but  also 
the  constabulary  and  police  forces,  which  fre- 
quently appear  to  be  merely  special  military  or- 
ganizations for  everyday  use  against  the  interior 
enemy,  but  betray  their  military  origin  by  their 
very  violence  and  brutality. 


CAPITALISTIC  MILITARISM        41 


ARMY    SYSTEMS    OF     SOME     FOREIGN     COUNTRIES. 

We  encounter  peculiar  forms  in  the  army  sys- 
tems of  countries  such  as  England  and  America, 
Switzerland  and  Belgium. 

Great  Britain  28  has  a  mercenary  army  ("regu- 
lar army"),  a  militia  with  a  mounted  yeomanry; 
besides,  the  so-called  Volunteers,  a  force  voluntar- 
ily recruited  which,  on  the  whole,  is  unpaid  and 
numbered  245,000  men  in  1905.  The  standing 
army,  including  the  militia  (in  which  the  furnish- 
ing of  substitutes  is  permitted)  numbered  444,000 
men  in  1905,  of  whom  however  only  some  162,000 
were  stationed  in  England.  For  Ireland  there 
exists,  moreover,  a  militarily  organized  police 
force  of  some  12,000  men.  The  standing  army  is 
largely  employed  abroad,  especially  in  India, 


28  Since  the  above  was  written  great  changes  have  taken 
place  in  the  army  system  of  Great  Britain.  During  the  world 
war  the  mercenary  army  has  disappeared  and  a  conscript 
army  has  taken  its  place.  Moreover,  in  the  years  immediately 
preceding  the  war  Great  Britain's  volunteer  forces  underwent 
great  changes  in  composition  and  name.  The  militia,  too, 
ceased  to  exist,  either  in  name  or  in  fact,  after  19x18.  [TRANS- 
LATOR.] 


42  MILITARISM 

where  two-thirds  of  the  army  of  almost  230,000 29 
men  consists  of  natives.  The  colonies  have,  as  a 
rule,  their  own  militias  and  volunteer  forces. 
The  relation  between  Great  Britain's  home  and 
colonial  militarism  is  characterized  by  the  mili- 
tary budget,  which,  in  1897,  was  about  360  mil- 
lion marks  for  the  home  country  and  about  510 
million  marks  for  India.  To  this  must  be  added 
the  immense  fleet,  with  crews  and  marines  num- 
bering almost  200,000  men. 

The  army  system  of  the  United  States  is  a  mix- 
ture of  standing  army  and  militia.  The  army, 
which  is  made  up  by  recruiting30  and  is  by  law 
limited  to  a  maximum  strength  of  100,000  men, 
numbers  in  times  of  peace,  according  to  the  en- 
listed strength  of  1905,  61,000  men  (on  October 
15,  1906,  including  the  Philippine  Scouts,  67,253 
men),  among  them  3,800  officers,  mostly  educated 
at  the  military  academy  at  West  Point.  In  the 
same  year  the  militia  numbered  some  111,000 

29  In  1905-6,  229,820.    In  the  Native  States  136,837  soldiers 
in  1003. 

30  Recruiting  is  becoming  ever  more  difficult,  and  the  per- 
centage of  alien  recruits  is  growing,  a  fact  that  worries  the 
American  government 


CAPITALISTIC  MILITARISM        43 

men.  The  militia  is  organized  on  a  fairly  demo- 
cratic basis.  In  times  of  peace  it  is  under  the 
control  of  the  governors  of  the  various  states,  and 
its  armament  and  training  is  not  in  accordance 
with  modern  efficiency.  Besides,  an  important 
part  is  played  by  the  police  force,  frequently  or- 
ganized on  a  military  basis. 

Of  quite  an  original  kind  is  another  institution 
which,  considered  in  its  formal  aspect,  does  not 
fall  within  the  frame  of  this  chapter,  but  which, 
however,  must  not  be  left  unmentioned  in  this 
connection  on  account  of  the  function  it  performs. 
In  all  the  capitalist  countries  we  find  the  gun-men 
of  the  employers,  even  if,  in  some  cases,  they  be 
only  strike-breakers  armed  by  the  employers. 
(This  is  no  rare  occurrence  in  Switzerland  and 
France,  for  instance,  and  as  to  Germany  we  refer 
the  reader  to  the  Hamburg  ship-builders'  strike 
and  the  incidents  at  Nuremberg  in  1906).  But 
the  American  capitalists  have  at  all  times  at  their 
disposal  such  a  band  of  gun-men  of  prime  quality 
in  the  shape  of  the  armed  Pinkerton  detectives. 
Finally,  taking  into  consideration  some  30,000 


44  MILITARISM 

men  in  the  American  navy,  in  1905,  we  see  that 
the  United  States,  too,  furnishes  a  choice  collec- 
tion of  the  main  forms  of  the  armed  forces  of  the 
state. 

In  Switzerland  there  existed  until  lately  a  real 
people's  army,  a  g-jneml  arming  of  the  people. 
Every  Swiss  citizen,  able  to  bear  arms,  had  his  gun 
and  ammunition  continually  in  his  house.  That 
was  the  army  of  democracy  of  which  Gaston 
Moch  treats  in  his  well-known  book.  Switzer- 
land enjoying  an  international  guarantee  equal  to 
that  of  Belgium,  it  was  only  natural  that  in  this 
country  "militarism  for  abroad"  should  assume 
and  retain  a  particularly  mild  character,  a  result 
to  which  numerous  other  circumstances  contrib- 
uted their  share.  But  the  "militarism  for  home" 
changed  with  the  accentuation  of  class  antagon- 
ism. The  fact  that  the  proletariat  possessed  arms 
and  ammunition  was  increasingly  felt,  by  the  capi- 
talist class  that  wanted  to  dominate,  to  be  an  im- 
pediment to  its  liberty  to  exploit  and  oppress  and 
even  a  danger  to  its  existence.  So,  in  September, 
}Cs>9,  they  began  to  disarm  the  people  by  taking 


CAPITALISTIC  MILITARISM        45 

its  cartridges  away  and  endeavoring  at  the  same 
time  to  develop  with  continually  increasing  vigor 
the  existing  rudiments  of  militarism  in  the  direc- 
tion of  the  institutions  of  the  great  military 
powers.  Attempts  were  made  to  transform  suc- 
cessively the  active  portions  of  the  army  into  a 
willing  instrument  of  class  domination  by  all  the 
means  employed  by  those  military  powers.  In 
that  way  the  celebrated  Swiss  militia  developed 
more  and  more  the  repellant  traits  which  have 
made  all  standing  armies  a  disgrace  to  civilization. 
Nothing  has  been  changed  by  the  resolution  on 
the  employment  of  soldiers  in  strikes  which  was 
passed  by  the  National  Council,  on  December  2 1 , 
1906,  in  connection  with  the  law  on  military  or- 
ganization.31 

Because  of  her  neutrality,  Belgium1  s  demand 
for  soldiers  for  her  standing  army  is  considerably 
smaller  (by  about  one-half)  than  her  "stock"  of 
material  for  soldiering.  On  that  account  the  sys- 
tem of  universal  military  service  is  modified  by  a 
draft  system  (drawing  lots)  and  by  the  substitute 

»l  See  p.  151. 


46  MILITARISM 

system,  which  latter  deeply  influences  the  charac- 
ter of  the  army.  Naturally,  only  the  well-to-do 
are  able  to  furnish  substitutes,  and  they  as  nat- 
urally make  the  widest  use  of  it.  At  first  that  sys- 
tem of  furnishing  substitutes,  which  was  formerly 
so  general,  may  not  have  been  of  any  special  polit- 
ical significance,  but  in  Belgium  it  has  led  to  a 
result  very  serious  for  the  ruling  class,  as  the 
country  possesses  a  numerous  proletariat  and  the 
percentage  of  workmen  is  very  great  among  the 
men  liable  to  military  service  and  drawn  by  lot. 
Even  that  portion  of  the  proletarian  Belgian  army 
which  did  not  consist  of  class-conscious  prole- 
tarians and  proletarians  ready  to  risk  all,  so 
rapidly  succumbed  to  the  anti-militarist  propa- 
ganda that  for  years  past  it  has  not  had  any  value 
as  a  weapon  in  the  hands  of  the  ruling  class 
against  the  interior  enemy  and  is  no  longer  used  as 
such.  But  they  found  a  way  out  of  the  diffi- 
culty. From  former  times  there  existed  an  insti- 
tution, called  the  civic  guard.  To  the  civic  guard 
belong  those  who  have  drawn  a  lucky  number  and 
have  furnished  substitutes,  but  only  if  they  can 


CAPITALISTIC  MILITARISM        47 

buy  their  own  uniforms  and  arms,  a  condition  al- 
most excluding  the  poorer  population.  It  used  to 
be  nothing  but  a  fancy-dress  parade;  its  members 
were  mostly  Liberals,  its  organization,  democratic. 
Members  of  the  civic  guard  kept  their  arms  at 
home,  elected  their  own  officers,  etc.  A  change 
was  brought  about  in  consequence  of  the  increas- 
ing untrustworthiness  of  the  standing  army.  The 
administration  and  management  of  the  civic  guard 
were  taken  out  of  the  hands  of  the  municipalities 
and  transferred  to  those  of  the  government,  the 
democratic  institutions  were  abolished,  and  the 
arms  were  taken  away  from  the  individuals  and 
locked  away  in  the  depots  of  the  military  admin- 
istration. A  fairly  rigorous  system  of  military 
drill  was  introduced,  and  the  training  of  the  civic 
guard  was  confided  to  the  most  objectionable 
characters  among  the  former  officers  of  the  stand- 
ing army.  Men  between  the  ages  of  20  and  30 
have  to  train  no  less  than  three  nights  a  week  and 
on  half  of  a  Sunday  every  two  weeks,  and  if  for- 
merly those  military  exercises  reminded  one  of  the 
happy-go  lucky  functions  of  our  German  civic  sol- 


48  MILITARISM 

diers  of  olden  days,  they  are  now  carried  out  under 
a  sharp  control  and  punctuality  is  enforced  by 
punishments.  It  is  to  be  noted  that  this  reorgan- 
ization of  the  civic  guard  has  only  taken  place  in 
communities  of  more  than  20,000  inhabitants, 
whilst  in  the  other  places  the  civic  guard  has  re- 
mained a  ridiculous  pretence.  That  fact,  too, 
marks  the  civic  guard  to  be  a  special  force  of  the 
government  in  the  struggle  against  the  "interior 
enemy."  Excluding  the  military  police,  the 
standing  army  numbered,  in  1905,  about  46.000 
men;  the  active  civic  guard  numbered  about 
44,000  men,  almost  as  many. 

Belgium  thus  possesses  an  army  against  the  ex- 
terior, and  a  special  army  against  the  interior 
enemy,  an  exquisite  arrangement  which,  as  the  em- 
ployment of  the  civic  guard  during  the  late  suf- 
frage struggles  and  strikes  has  proved,  renders  and 
will  continue  to  render  good  service  to  the  capi- 
talist regime  in  Belgium. 

In  addition,  there  is  in  Belgium  the  constabu- 
lary or  military  police,  who  have  simply  to  per- 
form military  tasks  in  war  as  well  as  during  strikes 


CAPITALISTIC  MILITARISM        49 

and  riots.  They  are  very  numerous  and  spread 
all  over  the  country,  of  great  mobility,  and  can  be 
concentrated,  shifted  and  mobilized  at  a  moment's 
notice;  at  Tervueren,  near  Brussels,  they  have 
general  barracks  for  their  flying  brigade,  and  they 
swarm  out  during  strikes  and  such  like  move- 
ments all  over  the  country  like  a  flight  of  wasps. 
Most  of  them  are  former  non-commissioned  offi- 
cers of  the  army,  they  are  well  paid,  excellently 
armed,  in  short,  an  elite  force.  Whilst  the  civic 
guard  is  as  if  created  for  its  task  in  the  class-strug- 
gle, because  it  represents  nothing  less  than  a  spe- 
cial military  mobilization  of  the  capitalist  bour- 
geoisie, which  is  well  aware  of  its  interests,  the 
"watch-dogs"  of  capitalism,  organized  in  the  con- 
stabulary, play  their  part  no  less  efficiently  for  the 
present,  according  to  the  rule  that  they  must  play 
the  tune  called  for  by  him  who  pays  the  piper. 

Japan,  a  country  in  about  the  same  capitalist- 
feudal  stage  of  development  as  Germany,  has  in 
spite  of  her  insular  position,  which  is  similar  to 
that  of  England,  and  in  consequence  of  her 
strained  foreign  relations,  of  late  become  even 


50  MILITARISM 

from  a  military  point  of  view  a  veritable  counter- 
part of  Germany,  except  perhaps  that  her  troops 
are  given  a  more  serviceable  war  training. 

CONCLUSIONS.       RUSSIA. 

It  follows  from  all  this  that  the  size  and  the 
particular  character  of  the  organization  of  an 
army  accommodate  themselves  to  the  international 
situation,  to  the  function  the  army  has  as  regards 
the  exterior  enemy.  The  international  tension  is 
driving  states  (even  those  which  are  not  yet  capi- 
talist and  which  compete  with  and  have  to  protect 
themselves  against  the  capitalist  states)  to  train 
all  citizens  capable  of  bearing  arms  and  to  adopt 
the  most  rigorous  form  of  military  organization, 
the  standing  conscript  army.  This  can  be  con- 
siderably relaxed  by  natural  causes  as,  for  in- 
stance, by  the  insular  position  of  Great  Britain  or 
the  comparatively  insular  situation  of  the  United 
States,  and  by  artificial  political  means  as,  for  in- 
stance, the  neutralization  of  Switzerland  and  the 
states  of  the  Low  Countries.  But  the  function  of 
"militarism  for  home,"  against  the  interior  enemy, 


CAPITALISTIC  MILITARISM         51 

militarism  as  a  weapon  in  the  class-struggle,  is  an 
ever  necessary  accompanying  feature  of  capitalist 
development,  and  even  Gaston  Moch  regards  the 
"re-establishment  of  order"  as  a  "legitimate  func- 
tion of  a  people's  army."  The  reason  why  "mili- 
tarism for  home"  exhibits  forms  greatly  differing 
from  one  another  explains  itself  simply  by  the 
fact  that  such  militarism  has  hitherto  had  a  more 
national  purpose,  the  fulfilment  of  which  was  not 
so  much  influenced  by  international  competition; 
that  therefore  it  can  give  much  more  consideration 
to  national  peculiarities.  However,  England  and 
also  America  (a  country  in  which  the  standing 
army  was  increased  from  27,000  to  about  61,000 
men  from  1896  to  1906,  where  the  number  of  men 
in  the  war  navy  was  doubled,  the  war  budget 
multiplied  by  two  and  a  half  and  the  navy  budget 
by  three  in  the  same  space  of  time,  and  where  Mr. 
Taft  asked  for  100  millions  more  for  1907)  are 
being  increasingly  pushed  into  the  paths  of  the 
militarism  of  the  European  continent.  This  is 
certainly  caused  in  the  first  line  by  changes  in  the 
international  situation  and  the  requirements  of 


52  MILITARISM 

jingo  and  imperialist  world  policy,  but  in  the  sec- 
ond line  quite  unmistakeably  by  changes  in  the 
interior  tension,  the  intensification  of  the  class- 
struggle.  It  is  scarcely  possible  that  the  militar- 
istic velleities  of  the  British  war  secretary,  Hal- 
dane,  in  September,  1906,  have  only  a  temporal 
relation  to  the  energetic  political  activity  of  the 
British  working-class.  The  propensity  to  intro- 
duce universal  military  training  of  the  Swiss  kind, 
which  for  the  time  being  has  been  repulsed  in  Eng- 
land in  spite  of  the  strong  agitation  in  favor  of 
such  training  and  which  in  the  United  States 
found  significant  expression  in  Mr.  Roosevelt's 
message  of  December  4,  1906,  is  not  a  symptom  of 
progress.  It  signifies,  in  spite  of  all  said  to  the 
contrary,  a  strengthening  of  militarism  as  com- 
pared to  its  present  condition,  and  is  a  station  on 
the  precipitous  road  leading  to  a  standing  army, 
as  the  example  of  Switzerland  proves. 

On  account  of  the  great  multiplicity  of  possible 
combinations  between  the  factors  determining  the 
extent  and  nature  of  the  special  requirements  for 
protection  against  the  exterior  and  interior  enemy, 


CAPITALISTIC  MILITARISM         53 

militarism  shows  unmistakeably  a  pronounced 
multiformity  and  transmutability.  But  that 
transmutability  is  always  kept  within  the  limits 
prescribed  by  the  absolutely  essential  capitalistic 
purpose  of  militarism.  Nevertheless,  develop- 
ment may  temporarily  take  directly  opposite 
roads.  While  France,  for  example,  under  Pic- 
quart,  is  earnestly  attacking  the  problem  of  greatly 
reducing  the  training  period  of  her  reserve  and 
territorial  troops,  reforming  the  "biribiri"  and 
abolishing  separate  military  jurisdiction,  the  presi- 
dent of  the  German  central  military  court,  von 
Massow,  quitted  the  service  in  the  fall  of  1906, 
because  the  military  command  (the  Prussian  war 
ministry)  had  on  the  strength  of  legal  interpre- 
tation formally  invaded  the  independence  of  the 
military  courts,  an  independence  which  had  indeed 
already  received  a  curious  construction  by  the  dis- 
ciplining of  the  judges  acting  in  the  Bilse  case. 
French  conditions  are  almost  exclusively  due  to 
the  prevailing  anti-clericalism;  clericalism  has  an 
important  pillar  in  the  army;  the  government 
needs  the  help  of  the  proletariat  for  its  anti-cleri- 


54  MILITARISM 

cal  policy.  Such  a  combination  is  of  course  not 
of  eternal  duration,  nor  has  it  sprung  from  a  real, 
lasting  tendency  of  evolution.  It  results  from  a 
constellation,  transient  in  its  nature,  and  is  quite 
compatible,  as  has  been  proved,  with  an  energetic 
fight  against  anti-militarism. 

From  these  points  of  view  an  interesting  case 
is  furnished  by  Russia  which  has  been  forced  to 
adopt  universal  military  service  on  account  of  her 
intensely  strained  foreign  relations,  and  which  as 
an  Asiatic  despotic  state  is  confronted  by  an  in- 
terior discord  without  example.  The  interior 
enemy  of  Czarism  is  not  only  the  proletariat,  but 
also  the  immense  mass  of  the  peasantry  and  the 
bourgeoisie,  and  even  a  large  portion  of  the  no- 
bility. Ninety-nine  percent,  of  the  Russian  sol- 
diers belong  to  classes  that  are  the  arch-enemies  of 
the  Czar's  despotism.  The  development  of  class- 
consciousness  is  extremely  hampered  by  the  low 
state  of  education,  national  and  religious  antagon- 
isms and  the  clashes  of  economic  and  social  inter- 
ests ;  further  by  the  greater  or  smaller  pressure  ex- 
ercised by  the  widely  ramified  bureaucratic  ap- 


CAPITALISTIC  MILITARISM         55 

paratus,  by  the  unfavorable  arrangement  of  politi- 
cal districts,  the  insufficiently  developed  means  of 
communication,  and  other  things.  By  a  cun- 
ningly devised  system  of  elite  forces,  like  the  con- 
stabulary and,  above  all,  the  Cossacks,  who  have 
been  positively  changed  into  a  special  social  class 
by  means  of  good  pay  and  other  material  rewards, 
large  political  privileges  and  the  establishment  of 
semi-socialist  Cossack  communities,  and  are  thus 
artificially  bound  to  the  despotic  regime,  Czar- 
ism  attempts  to  secure  a  sufficiently  strong  band 
of  faithful  retainers  to  fight  down  the  unrest 
which  has  penetrated  deeply  into  the  ranks  of  the 
army.  In  addition  to  these  "watch-dogs  of 
Czarism"  there  are  the  Circassians 32  and  other 
barbarian  populations  living  in  the  empire  of  the 
knout  who,  for  instance,  were  let  loose  upon  the 
land  like  a  pack  of  wolves  during  the  counter- 
revolution in  the  Baltic  Province,  and  all  the  other 
armed  beneficiaries  of  Czarism  whose  name  is 
legion,  the  police  and  their  accomplices,  as  well 

82  Even  Sheriff  von  Sievers-Roemershof  writes  of  the 
"blood-thirsty  Circassians"  in  the  Dunaseitung  of  December 
4,  (17.)  1906. 


56  MILITARISM 

as  the  Russian  toughs,  the  black  bands.  In  the 
bourgeois  capitalist  state  the  conscript  army,  in  its 
function  as  a  weapon  against  the  proletariat,  is  a 
crude  and,  at  the  same  time,  terrible  and  fantastic 
contradiction  in  itself;  under  the  Czar's  despotic 
regime  the  conscript  army  is  a  weapon  which  must 
turn  itself  more  and  more  with  crushing  power 
against  the  despotism  of  Czarism  itself,  from 
which  at  the  same  time  the  conclusion  must  be 
drawn  that  the  experience  derived  from  the  anti- 
militarist  developments  in  Russian  can  be  utilized 
only  with  great  care  in  regard  to  the  bourgeois  cap- 
italist states.  In  the  bourgeois  capitalist  states, 
the  attempts  of  the  ruling  classes  to  buy  the  people 
to  fight  against  itself,  and  that  even  largely  with 
money  taken  from  the  people  for  the  purpose  men- 
tioned, are  condemned  to  ultimate  failure.  In  re- 
gard to  Russia,  we  are  witnessing  already  how  des- 
perate and  wretched  attempts  of  Czarism  to  bribe 
the  revolution,  as  it  were,  are  resulting  in  an  early 
and  pitiable  fiasco  amidst  the  miseries  of  the  finan- 
cial situation,  in  spite  of  all  the  endeavors  of  the 
unscrupulous  international  stock-exchange  finan- 


CAPITALISTIC  MILITARISM        57 

ciers  to  retrieve  the  situation.  It  is  certain  that 
the  loan  question  is  an  important  one,  at  least  in  re- 
gard to  the  rate  at  which  the  revolution  develops ; 
but  as  little  as  revolutions  can  be  artificially  made, 
as  little  and  still  less  can  they  be  bought,33  even  if 
the  means  of  the  high  finance  of  the  world  should 
be  employed. 

88  Not  even,  as  now  proposed,  in  the  modern  way  of  job- 
bing away  and  discounting  concessions  and  natural  resources 
to  American  trusts,  that  last  invention  and  cry  of  despair  of 
the  financial  policy  of  Czarism. 


III. 

MEANS    AND    EFFECTS    OF    MILITARISM. 
THE    IMMEDIATE    GOAL. 

WE  now  proceed  to  a  special  investigation  of  the 
means  and  effects  of  militarism,  taking  as  a  para- 
digm the  Prusso-German  bureaucratic,  feudal  and 
capitalist  militarism,  that  worst  form  of  capitalist 
miltarism,  that  state  above  the  state. 

Though  it  is  true  that  modern  militarism  is  but 
an  institution  of  our  capitalist  society,  it  is  none 
the  less  true  that  it  is  an  institution  which  has 
almost  succeeded  in  becoming  an  independent  in- 
stitution, an  end  in  itself. 

In  order  to  fulfil  its  purpose  militarism  must 
turn  the  army  into  a  handy,  docile,  effective  tool. 
It  must  raise  its  equipment  to  the  highest  possible 
perfection  and,  on  the  other  hand,  as  the  army  is 
not  composed  of  machines,  but  of  men,  being  a 
kind  of  living  machinery,  it  must  inspire  the  army 
with  the  proper  "spirit." 

58 


MEANS  AND  EFFECTS  59 

The  first  part  of  the  problem  is  ultimately  a 
question  of  finance,  which  will  be  dealt  with  later. 
We  shall  deal  with  the  second  part  first. 

The  question  presents  three  aspects.  Militar- 
ism seeks  to  create  and  promote  the  military  spirit 
above  all  and  in  the  first  line  in  the  active  army 
itself;  secondly  in  those  portions  of  the  popula- 
tion furnishing  the  reserves  of  the  army  in  case  of 
mobilization;  finally  in  all  the  other  parts  of  the 
population  that  are  of  importance  for  militaristic 
and  anti-militaristic  purposes. 

MILITARY    PEDAGOGY.       TRAINING    SOLDIERS. 

That  proper  "military  spirit,"  also  called 
"patriotic  spirit"  and,  in  Prussia-Germany,  "loy- 
alty  to  the  king,"  signifies  in  short  a  constant 
readiness  to  pitch  into  the  exterior  or  the  interior 
enemy  whenever  commanded  to  do  so.  Taken  by 
itself  the  most  suitable  condition  for  its  produc- 
tion is  a  state  of  complete  stupidity,  or  at  least  as 
low  an  intelligence  as  possible  which  enables  one 
to  drive  the  mass  as  a  herd  of  cattle  in  whatever 
direction  is  demanded  by  the  interest  of  the  "ex- 


60  MILITARISM 

isting  order."  The  avowal  of  the  Prussian  war 
minister,  von  Einem,  who  said  that  he  liked  a  sol- 
dier loyal  to  his  king,  even  he  were  a  bad  shot, 
better  than  a  less  loyal  one  however  good  a  shot 
he  might  be,  certainly  came  from  the  depth  of  the 
soul  of  this  representative  of  German  militarism. 
But  here  militarism  finds  itself  in  a  bad  quandary. 
The  handling  of  arms,  strategy  and  tactics  de- 
mand of  the  modern  soldier  not  a  small  measure 
of  intelligence  and  cause  the  more  intelligent  sol- 
dier also  to  be  the  more  efficient,  c&teris  pan  bus. 
For  that  reason  alone  militarism  would  no  longer 
be  able  to  do  anything  with  a  merely  stupid  mass 
of  men.  Moreover,  capitalism  could  not  use  such 
a  stupid  mass,  as  the  great  mass  of  the  people,  es- 
pecially the  great  mass  of  the  proletariat,  have 
to  perform  economic  functions  requiring  intelli- 
gence. To  be  able  to  exploit,  to  secure  the 
highest  possible  rate  of  profit — the  task  of  its  life 
which  it  cannot  escape — capitalism  is  compelled 
by  a  tragical  fate  to  foster  systematically  and  to 
a  large  extent  among  its  slaves  the  same  intelli- 
gence which,  as  it  knows  quite  well,  must  bring 


6i 

death  and  annihilation  to  capitalism.  All  the  at- 
tempts to  guide  the  ship  of  capitalism  by  skilful 
tacking,  by  a  cunning  cooperation  of  church  and 
school,  safely  between  the  Scylla  of  too  low  an 
intelligence  which  would  be  too  great  an  impedi- 
ment to  exploitation  and  would  make  the  prole- 
tarian even  unfit  as  a  beast  of  burden,  and  the 
Charybdis  of  an  education  which  revolutionizes 
the  minds  of  the  exploited,  enabling  them  to  grasp 
their  class-interests  in  their  entirety  and  neces- 
sarily bringing  destruction  to  capitalism,  must  end 
in  dreary  and  hopeless  failure.  It  is  only  the  East 
Elbian  l  farmhands  (who  still  may  be,  as  was 
once  said,  the  most  stupid  workers  indeed  and  the 
best  workers— for  the  junkers,  be  it  noted)  who 
largely  furnish  militarism  with  human  material 
that  can  be  commanded  in  herds  without  trouble, 
purely  like  slaves,  but  can  be  used  to  advantage 
in  the  army  only  with  care  and  within  certain 
limits,  on  account  of  an  intelligence  which  is  even 
too  low  for  militarism. 


*A  word  coined  in  Germany  to  describe  those  parts  of 
Prussia  situated  east  of  the  river  Elbe,  the  home  of  the  Prus- 
sian junkers.  [TRANSLATOR.] 


62  MILITARISM 

Our  best  soldiers  are  Social  Democrats,  is  a  much 
quoted  expression.  It  shows  the  difficulty  of  the 
task  of  imbuing  the  conscript  army  with  the 
proper  military  spirit.  As  the  mere  unquestion- 
ing and  slavish  2  obedience  does  no  longer  suffice 
and  is  also  no  longer  possible,  militarism  must 
seek  to  dominate  the  will  of  its  human  material 
by  a  roundabout  way  in  order  to  create  its  shoot- 
ing automata.  It  must  bend  the  will  by  work- 
ing upon  the  men's  mind  and  soul  or  by  force,  it 
must  decoy  its  pupils  or  coerce  them.  The  proper 
"spirit"  needed  by  militarism  for  its  purpose 
against  the  foreign  enemy  consists  of  a  crazy  jingo- 
ism, narrow-mindedness  and  arrogance;  the  spirit 
it  needs  for  its  purposces  against  the  enemy  at 
home  is  that  of  a  lack  of  understanding  or  even 
hatred  of  every  kind  of  progress,  every  enterprise 
and  movement  even  distantly  endangering  the 
rule  of  the  actually  dominating  class.  It  is  in 
that  direction  that  militarism,  when  moulding  the 
character  of  its  charges  by  its  milder  means,  must 


z"Kadavergehorsam"  (the  obedience  of  the  corpse)  is  the 
expressive  word  used  in  the  German  original.     [TRANSLATOR.] 


MEANS  AND  EFFECTS  63 

turn  the  mind  and  sentiments  of  those  soldiers 
whose  class-interest  removes  them  entirely  from 
the  sphere  of  jingoism  and  makes  them  see  in 
every  step  in  advance,  including  the  overthrow 
of  the  existing  order  of  society  itself,  the  only 
reasonable  goal  to  be  aimed  at.  We  do  not  deny 
that  with  the  proletarian  of  military  age  class- 
consciousness  is  usually  not  yet  firmly  rooted, 
though  he  generally  greatly  surpasses  the  bour- 
geois youth  of  the  same  age  in  independence  of 
character  and  political  understanding. 

It  is  an  extremely  bold  and  cunning  system, 
this  system  of  moulding  a  soldier's  intellect  and 
feeling,  which  attempts  to  supplant  the  class- 
division  according  to  social  status  by  a  class-divi- 
sion according  to  ages,  to  create  a  special  class  of 
proletarians  of  the  ages  from  20  to  22,  whose 
thinking  and  feeling  are  directly  opposed  to  the 
thinking  and  feeling  of  the  proletarians  of  a  differ- 
ent age. 

In  the  first  place  the  proletarian  in  uniform 
must  be  separated  locally,  sharply  and  without 
any  consideration,  from  members  of  his  class  and 


64  MILITARISM 

his  own  family.  That  purpose  is  attained  by 
removing  him  from  his  home  district,  which  has 
been  accomplished  systematically  especially  in 
Germany,  and  above  all  by  shutting  him  up  in 
barracks.3  One  might  almost  describe  the  sys- 
tem as  a  copy  of  the  Jesuitical  method  of  ed- 
ucation, a  counter-part  of  the  monastic  institu- 
tions. 

In  the  next  place  that  segregation  must  be  kept 
up  as  long  a  time  as  possible,  a  tendency  which,  as 
the  military  necessity  of  the  long  period  of  train- 
ing has  long  since  disappeared,  is  thwarted  by  un- 
toward financial  consequences.  It  was  substan- 
tially that  circumstance  to  which  we  owe  the  in- 
troduction of  the  two-years'  military  service  in 
1892. 

Finally,  the  time  thus  gained  must  be  utilized 
as  skilfully  as  possible  to  capture  the  souls  of  the 


3  A  dangerous  method  from  a  sanitary  point  of  view,  which 
in  France,  for  instance,  is  leading  to  a  very  extensive  infec- 
tion of  the  people  with  tuberculosis  and  syphilis.  The  French 
army  shows  from  five  to  seven  times  more  cases  of  tubercu- 
losis than  the  German  army.  In  a  few  decades,  exclaims  a 
warning  voice  in  France,  France  will  be  decimated  if  the  bar- 
racks system  be  not  abolished. 


MEANS  AND  EFFECTS  65 

young  men.     Various  means  are  employed  for 
that  purpose. 

All  human  weaknesses  and  senses  must  be  ap- 
pealed to  to  serve  the  system  of  military  educa- 
tion, exactly  as  is  done  in  the  church.  Ambition 
and  vanity  are  stimulated,  the  soldier's  coat  is 
represented  as  the  most  distinguished  of  all  coats, 
the  soldier's  honor  is  lauded  as  being  of  special 
excellence,  and  the  soldier's  status  is  trumpeted 
forth  as  the  most  important  and  distinguished  and 
is  indeed  endowed  with  many  privileges.4  The 
love  of  finery  is  appealed  to  by  turning  the  uni- 
form, contrary  to  its  purely  military  purpose,  into 
a  gay  masquerade  dress,  to  comply  with  the  coarse 
tastes  of  those  lower  classes  who  are  to  be  fasci- 
nated. All  kinds  of  little  glittering  marks  of  dis- 

4  We  need  only  point  to  the  intentioned  helplessness  of  the 
police  in  face  of  disorderly  soldiers,  and  especially  officers. 
The  reader  is  further  referred  to  the  privilege  of  the  sol- 
diery to  march  in  processions  of  unending  lengths  through  the 
cities  and  thus  to  disturb  traffic  greatly  without  rhyme  or 
reson — to  satisfy,  of  course,  the  demands  of  military  aesthetics. 
The  acme  of  the  ridiculous  conceit  of  this  carefully  reared 
craziness  was  seen  some  years  ago  in  Berlin  when  the  fire- 
brigade,  hastening  to  a  fire,  was  simply  stopped  by  a  military 
column  that  crossed  its  route  and  that  felt  no  inclination  to 
have  its  beautiful  and  majestic  order  deranged.  It  is  true, 
this  was  condemned  later  on. 


66  MILITARISM 

tinction,  marks  of  honor,  cords  for  proficiency  in 
shooting,  etc.,  serve  to  satisfy  the  same  low  in- 
stinct, the  love  for  finery  and  swagger.  Many  a 
soldier  has  had  his  woes  soothed  by  the  regimental 
band  to  which,  next  to  the  glittering  gew-gaw  of 
the  uniforms  and  the  pompous  military  ostenta- 
tion, is  due  the  greatest  part  of  that  unreserved 
popularity  which  our  "magnificent  war  army"  can 
amply  boast  of  among  children,  fools,  servant- 
girls  and  the  riff-raff.  Whoever  has  but  once  seen 
the  notorious  public  attending  the  parades  and 
the  crowds  following  the  mounting  of  the  Berlin 
palace  guard  must  be  clear  on  that  point.  It  is 
sufficiently  known  that  the  popularity  of  the  mili- 
tary uniform  thus  actually  created  among  certain 
portions  of  the  civilian  population,  is  a  factor  of 
considerable  importance  to  allure  the  uneducated 
elements  of  the  army. 

The  lower  the  mentality  of  the  soldiers,  the 
lower  their  social  condition,  the  better  is  the  effect 
of  all  these  means;  for  such  elements  are  not 
only  more  easily  deceived  by  tinsel  and  finery  on 
account  of  their  weak  faculty  of  discernment,  but 


MEANS  AND  EFFECTS  67 

to  them  the  difference  between  the  level  of  their 
former  civilian  existence  and  their  military  posi- 
tion also  appears  to  be  particularly  great  and 
striking.  (One  need  only  think  of  an  American 
negro  or  an  East  Prussian  agricultural  slave  sud- 
denly invested  with  the  "most  distinguished" 
coat.)  There  is  thus  a  tragical  conflict  going  on, 
in  as  much  as  those  means  have  less  effect  with  the 
intelligent  industrial  proletarian  for  whom  they 
are  intended  in  the  first  line,  than  with  those  ele- 
ments that  need  hardly  be  influenced  in  that  di- 
rection, for  the  present  at  least,  since  they  furnish 
without  them  a  sufficiently  docile  military  raw 
material.  However  those  means  may  in  their 
case,  too,  contribute  to  the  preservation  of  the 
"spirit"  approved  of  by  militarism.  The  same 
purpose  is  served  by  regimental  festivals,  the  cele- 
bration of  the  Emperor's  birthday,  and  other  con- 
trivances. 

When  everything  has  been  done  to  get  the  sol- 
dier into  the  mood  of  drunkenness,  as  it  were,  to 
narcotize  his  soul,  to  inflame  his  feelings  and  im- 
agination, his  reason  must  be  worked  upon  sys- 


68  MILITARISM 

tematically.  The  daily  military  school  lesson  be- 
gins in  which  it  is  sought  to  drum  into  the  soldier 
a  childish,  distorted  view  of  the  world,  properly 
trimmed  up  for  the  purposes  of  militarism.  This 
instruction,  too,  which  is  mostly  given  by  entirely 
incapable  and  uneducated  people,  has  no  effect 
whatever  on  the  more  intelligent  industrial  prole- 
tarians, who  are  quite  often  much  more  intelli- 
gent than  their  instructors.  It  is  an  experiment 
on  an  unsuitable  material,  an  arrow  rebounding 
on  him  that  shot  it.  That  has  only  lately  been 
proved,  in  a  controversy  with  General  Liebert 
about  the  anti-socialist  instruction  of  soldiers,  by 
The  Post  and  Max  Lorenz,  with  the  acumen  gen- 
erated by  the  capitalist  competition  for  profits. 

To  produce  the  necessary  pliability  and  tract- 
ableness  of  will  pipe-clay  service,  the  discipline  of 
the  barracks,  the  canonization  of  the  officer's  5  and 

B  These  are  indeed  strange  saints !  The  reader  may  remem- 
ber the  Bilse  case  of  the  month  of  November,  1903,  the  many 
"small  garrisons"  after  the  Forbach  model,  the  gambling  and 
champagne  decrees,  the  officers'  dueling  practices  (that  fine 
fteur  of  the  officers'  honor),  the  stabbings  of  Briisewitz  and 
the  shooting  propensities  of  Hiissener,  the  Ruhstrat  affair 
and  that  of  the  "harmless,"  the  novels  of  Bilse  and  Beyer- 
lein  depicting  the  life  of  the  officers  with  photographic  truth, 


MEANS  AND  EFFECTS  69 

non-commissioned  officer's8  coat,  which  in  many 
respects  appears  to  be  truly  sacrosanct  and  legibus 
solutus,  have  to  do  service,  in  short,  discipline  and 
control  which  bind  the  soldier  as  in  fetters  of 
steel  in  regard  to  all  he  does  and  thinks,  on  duty 
and  off  duty.  Each  and  every  one  is  ruthlessly 
bent,  pulled  and  stretched  in  all  directions  in  such 
a  manner  that  the  strongest  back  runs  danger  of 
being  broken  in  bits  and  either  bends  or  breaks.7 

"First-class  People"  by  Schlicht  (Count  Baudissin),  the  scan- 
dals about  Jesko  von  Puttkamer  and,  last  but  not  least,  that 
about  Prince  Arenberg  which  also  belongs  to  this  category. 
The  French  "Little  Garrison,"  Verdun,  raised  much  dust  in 
the  fall  of  1906.  In  the  eyes  of  the  worshippers  of  the  uni- 
form all  these  things  are  of  course  mostly  considered  as  mere 
"amiable,  piquant  weaknesses"  of  the  worshipped  saint,  who 
is,  however,  very  particular  about  people  confessing  the  Chris- 
tian creed.  Naturally,  we  find  here,  too,  that  international 
solidarity  of  the  noblest  and  best.  An  interesting  case  is  the 
ragging  practice  of  the  officers  of  the  English  grenadier  guard 
regiments,  which  were  exposed  at  the  beginning  of  1903. 

•The  German  non-commissioned  officer  has  been  called  the 
"representative  of  God  on  earth." 

7  The  most  shocking  proof  is  furnished  by  the  statistics  of 
suicides  among  soldiers.  Those  suicides  of  soldiers  are  an- 
other international  phenomenon.  According  to  official  "sta- 
tistics" one  soldier  among  3,700  committed  suicide  in  Ger- 
many in  1901 ;  in  Austria,  one  among  920.  In  the  lotli 
Austrian  army  corps  80  soldiers  and  12  officers  committed 
suicide  in  1901,  127  others  became  insane  and  left  as  invalids 
in  consequence  of  self-mutilation  and  maltreatment.  In  the 
same  period  400  men  deserted  and  725  were  condemned  to 
hard  labor  or  close  arrest.  In  Austria,  of  course,  the  con- 


70  MILITARISM 

The  zealous  fostering  of  the  "church"  spirit, 
which  was  explicitly  demanded  as  a  special  aim 
of  military  education  in  a  resolution  submitted  to 
the  budget  commission  of  the  Reichstag  in  the 
month  of  February,  1892,  and  then  voted  down 
(without  prejudice,  by  the  way),  is  another 
method  of  the  kind  to  complete  the  work  of  mili- 
tary oppression  and  enslavement. 

Military  instruction  and  ecclesiastical  influence 
are  at  one  and  the  same  time  methods  of  kind 
persuasion  and  compulsion,  but  the  latter  mostly 
only  in  a  carefully  veiled  form  of  application. 

The  most  attractive  bait  that  is  employed  to 
make  up  and  fill  the  important  standing  forma- 
tions of  the  army  is  the  system  of  reengagement 
of  men  whose  time  has  expired,  who  are  given  a 
chance  to  earn  premiums  as  non-commissioned  offi- 
cers 8  and  are  promised  employment  in  the  civil 

flict  of  nationalities  greatly  contributes  to  aggravate  the  situa- 
tion. 

8  This  premium  system,  with  a  maximum  of  1000  marks, 
was  introduced  for  the  whole  of  Germany  in  1891,  after  hav- 
ing been  in  existence  before  that  time  in  Saxony  and  Wurt- 
temberg  and  after  having  had  a  forerunner  in  the  empire  in 
the  "non-recurrent  extra-pay."  It  is  also  met  with  elsewhere; 
in  France,  however,  where  the  amounts  are  much  higher  (up 


MEANS  AND  EFFECTS  71 

service  after  they  leave  the  army.9     It  is  a  most 


to  4,000  francs),  it  has  been  employed  with  little  success.  The 
schools  for  non-commissioned  officers  are  also  a  case  in  point. 

9  The  speech  made  by  Chancellor  Caprivi  (Bismarck's  suc- 
cessor), in  the  Reichstag,  on  February  27,  1891,  is  the  classical 
confession  of  a  noble  capitalist-militarist  soul  of  its  troubles 
and  anxieties,  its  hopes  and  aims  and  the  methods  adopted 
in  the  pursuit  of  those  aims.  It  throws  wide  open  a  window 
through  which  we  can  have  a  good  look  at  the  most  secret 
parts  of  that  soul.  The  speech  begins  with  the  statement 
that  the  government  refrained  from  re-introducing  the  ex- 
pired anti-socialist  law  [by  which  Bismarck  had  sought  to 
fight  down  socialism  during  the  preceding  dozen  years  or  so — 
TRANSLATOR]  only  on  the  understanding  that  all  possible 
measures  be  resorted  to  in  order  to  cut  the  ground  from  under 
the  feet  of  the  Social  Democracy  and  engage  in  a  struggle 
with  it;  one  of  those  measures  (clearly  a  substitute  for  the 
anti-socialist  law)  was  to  consist  of  the  premiums  for  non- 
commissioned officers  in  conjunction  u-ith  the  "Zivilversor- 
gungsschein"  (a  warrant  entitling  the  holder  to  a  place  in 
a  civil  office).  Caprivi  continued:  "The  demands  made  on 
non-commissioned  officers  increase  on  account  of  the  grow- 
ing education  of  the  nation.  A  superior  can  fill  his  posi- 
tion only  if  he  feels  superior  to  the  men  entrusted  to  his 
charge.  .  .  ." 

"The  maintenance  of  discipline  has  in  itself  become  more 
difficult,  and  it  becomes  harder  still  when  we  have  to  take  up 
the  struggle  with  the  Social  Democracy;  I  mean  by  this  not 
the  struggle  by  means  of  shooting  and  bayoneting.  My 
memory  goes  back  to  the  year  1848.  Conditions  were  far 
better  at  that  time,  for  the  ideas  had  then  not  arisen  through 
long  years  of  propaganda ;  they  cropped  up  suddenly  and  the 
old  non-commissioned  officers  had  a  much  easier  task  in  deal- 
ing with  the  men  than  they  have  now  in  dealing  with  the 
Social  Democracy.  (Quite  right!  on  the  benches  of  the  par- 
ties of  the  Right.)  And,  touching  upon  the  most  extreme 
case,  we  want  far  better  non-commissioned  officers  in  street 
fighting  against  the  Social  Democracy  than  in  fighting  against 
the  enemy.  When  facing  the  enemy  the  troops  can  be  filled 


72  MILITARISM 

cunningly  devised  and  dangerous  institution  which 
also  infects  our  whole  public  life  with  the  mili- 
taristic virus,  as  will  be  shown  further  on. 

The  whip  of  militarism,  the  method  by  which 
it  forces  men  to  obey,  reveals  itself  above  all  in 
the  disciplinary  system,10  in  the  military  penal 


with  enthusiasm  and  willingness  to  sacrifice  by  means  of 
patriotism  and  other  lofty  sentiments.  Street  fighting  and 
all  that  is  connected  with  it  is  not  calculated  to  raise  the  self- 
reliance  of  the  troops,  who  always  feel  that  they  are  facing 
their  countrymen."  .  .  .  "The  non-commissioned  officers  can 
retain  their  ascendency  only  if  we  seek  to  raise  their  status. 
The  allied  governments  [this  is  the  official  title  of  the  Ger- 
man federal  government — TRANSLATOR]  desire  to  raise  the 
level  of  the  class  of  the  non-commissioned  officers."  He  went 
on  to  say  that  it  was  necessary  to  create  a  "class  of  people" 
who  were  "bound  to  the  state  with  every  fibre  of  their  exist- 
ence." 

This  is  likewise  a  fine  description  of  the  psychology  of  the 
elite  troops. 

10  Arrest  combined  with  the  deprivation  of  food,  bed  and 
light ;  extra-drill,  etc. ;  the  barbaric  "tying  up"  in  war-time. 
The  Austrian  practice  of  "binding  hand  and  foot"  and  "tying 
up,"  the  Belgian  cachots,  the  international  naval  cat-o'-nine- 
tails and  similar  devices  are  well  known.  Less  well  remem- 
bered are  perhaps  the  atrocious  instruments  of  torture  em- 
ployed in  the  French  disciplinary  sections,  even  against  "po- 
litical" refractory  elements — the  poucettes,  the  menottes  and 
the  crapaudine  (see  the  pamphlet,  "Les  bagnes  militaires," 
published  in  1902  by  the  Federation  socialist?  autonome  de 
Cher,  a  speech  by  Breton  in  the  French  Chamber,  with  illus- 
trations; Georges  Darien,  "Biribiri,"  (the  collective  name  of 
all  military  disciplinary  institutions  in  North  Africa),  Dubois- 
Desaulle,  "Sous  la  casagne,"  both  published  in  Paris  by 
Stock.  Material  about  the  compagnies  de  discipline,  peni- 


MEANS  AND  EFFECTS  73 

law  with  its  ferocious  threats  for  the  slightest  re- 
sistance against  the  so-called  military  spirit,  in 
the  military  judiciary  with  its  semi-mediaeval  pro- 
cedure, with  its  habit  of  meting  out  the  most  in- 
human and  barbaric  punishments  for  the  slightest 
insubordination  and  its  mild  treatment  of  the 
transgressions  committed  by  superiors  against  their 
subordinates,  with  its  habit  of  juggling  away,  al- 
most on  principle,  the  soldier's  right  of  self-de- 
fence against  his  superiors.  Nothing  can  arouse 
more  bitter  feeling  against  militarism  and  noth- 
ing can  at  the  same  time  be  more  instructive  than 
a  simple  perusal  of  the  articles  of  war  and  the 
records  of  the  military  penal  cases. 

This  chapter  also  includes  the  maltreatment  of 
soldiers,  which  will  be  specially  dealt  with  on  a 


tenders  and  the  travaux  forces  (penal  companies,  peniten- 
tiaries and  hard  labor)  in  the  French  Foreign  Legion  and  the 
victims  of  these  institutions  can  be  found  in  Daumig's  article 
in  the  Neue  Zeit,  vol.  99-100,  p.  365,  and  especially  p.  369.  At 
this  writing  energetic  attempts  are  being  made  to  suppress 
the  "biribiri,"  (Debates  of  the  French  Chamber,  December  8 
and  10,  1906). 

The  disciplinary  beatings  (ragging)  to  which  the  officers 
of  English  grenadier  guard  regiments  are  wont  to  regale  each 
other  with  a  laudable  democratic  zeal  deserve  to  be  mentioned 
as  a  curiosity. 


74  MILITARISM 

later  occasion.  It  forms,  it  is  true,  not  a  legal, 
but  in  practice  perhaps  the  most  effective,  of  all 
violent  disciplinary  methods  of  militarism. 

Thus  they  attempt  to  tame  men  as  they  tame 
animals.  Thus  the  recruits  are  drugged,  confused, 
flattered,  bribed,  oppressed,  imprisoned,  polished 
and  beaten;  thus  one  grain  is  added  to  the  other 
and  mixed  and  kneaded  to  furnish  the  mortar  for 
the  immense  edifice  of  the  army;  thus  one  stone  is 
laid  upon  the  other  in  a  well  calculated  fashion 
to  form  a  bulwark  against  the  forces  of  subver- 


sion.11 


11  The  military  results  of  these  educational  methods  are 
dealt  with  elsewhere.  We  must  also  point  out  their  moral 
results,  which  induce  the  bourgeois,  the  anarchist  and  semi- 
anarchist  opponents  of  militarism  to  let  themselves  be  car- 
ried away  by  an  indignation  breathing  an  uncommon  passion 
and  delivered  with  a  verbose  pathos.  "The  army  is  the  school 
of  crime"  (Anatole  France)  ;  "drunkenness,  sexual  immor- 
ality and  hypocrisy,  that  is  what  life  in  the  barracks  teaches" 
(Prof.  Richet).  According  to  the  "Manuel  du  soldat"  the 
time  of  military  service  is  an  "apprenticeship  in  brutality  and 
vulgarity";  "a  school  of  debauchery";  it  leads  to  "moral  cow- 
ardice, submission  and  slavish  fearfulness."  Indeed,  one  can 
scarcely  imagine  certain  military  festivals  without  the  patri- 
otic drunkenness,  which  is  of  course  "upholding  the  state." 
Consult  the  Leipziger  Volksseitung,  of  December  I,  1906, 
about  "the  drinking  and  rioting  festivals"  of  the  veterans'  as- 
sociations (words  used  by  Pastor  Cesar).  The  sanitary  re- 
sults are  likewise  anything  but  gratifying.  Concerning  the 
French  army,  see  p.  64,  note  3 ;  the  sanitary  state  of  the 


MEANS  AND  EFFECTS  75 

That  all  those  methods  of  alluring,  disciplining 
and  coercing  the  soldier  partake  of  the  nature  of 
a  weapon  in  the  class-struggle  is  made  evident  by 
the  institution  of  the  one-year  volunteer.  [Young 
men  with  high-school  education,  which  in  Ger- 
many can  hardly  be  attained  by  youths  belonging 
to  the  working  class,  have  the  privilege  of  serving 
but  one  year  instead  of  two,  paying  for  their  food, 
lodgings,  uniform,  etc.]  The  bourgeois  off- 
spring, destined  to  become  an  officer  of  the  re- 
serves, is  generally  above  the  suspicion  of  harbor- 
ing anti-capitalist,  anti-militarist  or  subversive 
ideas  of  any  description.  Consequently  he  is  not 
sent  out  of  his  home  district,  he  need  not  live  in 
the  barracks,  nor  is  he  obliged  to  attend  the  mili- 
tary school  or  the  church,  and  he  is  even  spared 
a  large  part  of  the  pipe-clay  drill.  Of  course,  if 
he  falls  into  the  clutches  of  discipline  and  the  mili- 
tary penal  law,  it  is  exceptional  and  usually  with 


standing  armies  of  England  and  America,  those  democratic 
countries,  is  downright  terrible ;  the  death  rate  is  far  higher 
in  those  countries  than  in  Germany.  Cf.  Surgeon-General  R. 
M.  O'Reilly's  report  of  1906  with  regard  to  dysentery  and  alco- 
holism. 


76  MILITARISM 

harmless  results,  and  the  habitual  oppressors  of 
the  soldiers,  though  they  frequently  nourish  a 
hatred  against  all  "educated  people,"  only  rarely 
venture  to  lay  hands  on  him.  The  education  of 
officers  furnishes  a  second  striking  proof  for  this 
thesis. 

Of  exceptional  importance  for  the  discipline  of 
an  army  is  the  cooperation  of  masses  of  men  which 
does  away  with  the  initiative  of  the  individual  to 
a  large  extent.  In  the  arjny  each  individual  is 
chained  to  all  the  rest  like  a  galley  slave,  and  is 
almost  incapable  of  acting  with  freedom.  The 
combined  force  of  the  hundreds  of  thousands  form- 
ing the  army  prevents  him  with  an  overwhelming 
power  from  making  the  slightest  movement  of  his 
own  volition.  All  the  parts  of  this  tremendous 
organism,  or  rather  of  this  tremendous  machinery 
are  not  only  subject  to  the  suggestive  influence  of 
the  word  of  command,  but  also  to  a  separate  hyp- 
notism, a  mass  suggestion  whose  influence,  how- 
ever, would  be  impotent  on  an  army  composed  of 
enlightened  and  resolute  opponents  of  militarism. 

The  two  tasks  of  militarism,  as  will  be  seen,  do 


MEANS  AND  EFFECTS  77 

not  at  all  harmonize  always  in  the  department  of 
military  education,  but  are  often  at  cross-purposes. 
That  is  not  only  true  of  training,  but  also  in  re- 
gard to  equipment.  War  training  demands  ever 
more  imperatively  a  continuously  growing  meas- 
ure of  initiative  on  the  part  of  the  soldier.  As  a 
"watch-dog  of  capital"  the  soldier  does  not  re- 
quire any  initiative,  he  is  not  even  allowed  to 
possess  it,  if  his  qualification  as  a  suicide  is  not  to 
be  destroyed.  In  short,  war  against  the  foreign 
foe  requires  men;  war  against  the  foe  at  home, 
slaves,  machines.  And  as  regards  equipment  and 
clothes  the  gaudy  uniforms,  the  glittering  buttons 
and  helmets,  the  flags,  the  parades,  the  cavalry 
charges  and  all  the  rest  of  the  nonsense  can  not  be 
dispensed  with  for  producing  the  spirit  necessary 
for  the  battle  against  the  interior  enemy,  though 
in  a  war  against  the  exterior  enemy  all  these  things 
would  positively  bring  about  a  calamity;  they 
are  simply  impossible.12  That  tragical  conflict, 
the  numerous  aspects  of  which  can  not  be  dealt 

12  We  naturally  include  in  the  battle  against  the  interior 
enemy  the  fight  carried  on  agaihst  the  spirit  of  international 
solidarity  which  is  opposed  to  "militarism  for  abroad." 


78  MILITARISM 

with  exhaustively  in  this  book,  has  not  been  com- 
prehended by  the  well-intentioned  critics  of  our 
militarism,  who  in  their  simplicity  only  use  the 
standard  applicable  to  a  system  of  training  for 
war. 

That  antagonism  of  interests  within  militarism 
itself,  that  self-contradiction  from  which  it  suffers, 
has  the  tendency  of  becoming  more  and  more 
acute.  Which  of  the  two  opposing  sets  of  inter- 
est gets  the  upper  hand  depends  at  a  given  time 
on  the  relation  existing  between  the  tension  in 
home  and  foreign  politics.  Here  we  see  clearly 
a  potential  self-destruction  of  militarism. 

When  the  war  against  the  interior  enemy,  in 
case  of  an  armed  revolution,  puts  such  great  de- 
mands on  military  art  that  dressed-up  slaves  and 
machines  no  longer  suffice  to  fight  him  down  the 
last  hour  of  the  violent  domination  of  the  minor- 
ity, of  capitalistic  oligarchy  will  also  have  struck. 

It  is  of  sufficient  importance  for  us  to  note  that 
the  described  military  spirit  as  such  confuses  and 
leads  astray  the  proletarian  class-consciousness  and 
that  militarism,  by  infecting  our  whole  public  life, 


MEANS  AND  EFFECTS  79 

serves  capitalism  with  that  spirit  in  all  other  di- 
rections, apart  from  the  purely  military,  for  in- 
stance, by  creating  and  promoting  proletarian 
docility  in  face  of  economic,  social  and  political 
exploitation  and  by  thwarting  as  much  as  possible 
the  struggle  for  the  liberation  of  the  working 
class.  We  shall  have  to  deal  with  this  later 
on. 

SEJtfl-OFFICIAL     AND     SEMI-MILITARY     ORGANIZA- 
TION OF  THE  CIVIL  POPULATION. 

Militarism  also  seeks  to  influence  those  persons 
who  do  not  yet  or  who  no  longer  belong  to  the 
active  army>  to  as  large  an  extent,  for  as  long  a 
period  and  as  strongly  as  possible.  It  attempts 
to  accomplish  its  purpose  in  the  first  place  by 
arrogating  to  itself  the  greatest  possible  authority 
over  those  persons,  for  instance,  by  a  system  of 
control,  by  largely  extending  the  military  juris- 
diction, the  procedure  by  the  military  courts  of 
honor  (which  is  even  employed  against  retired 
officers)  and  even  the  competence  of  the  military 
command.  This  method  is  characterized  with 


80  MILITARISM 

particular  clearness  in  the  muster  of  the  reserve- 
soldiers,  when  the  men  called  up  are  placed  under 
military  jurisdiction,  which  is  claimed  by  the  mili- 
tary authorities  to  last  for  the  whole  day,  though 
it  is  manifestly  against  the  law;  there  is  not  the 
slightest  ground  for  establishing  such  a  right,  it  is 
a  simple  usurpation.  In  this  connection  mention 
must  further  be  made  of  the  cadet  corps  and  vet- 
erans' associations  with  their  semi-official  or  semi- 
military  organization,  their  aping  of  the  military 
get-up,  fiddle-faddle  and  junketings.  A  chief 
part  in  that  department  of  militaristic  activity  is 
played  by  the  mischievous  reserve-officer  system, 
which  carries  the  military  caste  spirit  into  the 
civilian  society  and  perpetuates  that  spirit  and, 
which  is  still  more  important,  places  the  higher 
officials  of  the  state  and  communal  civil  adminis- 
tration, as  well  as  those  of  the  law  and  educational 
system,  almost  without  an  exception  under  mili- 
tary discipline,  subjecting  them  to  the  militaristic 
spirit,  to  the  whole  militaristic  view  of  life,  and 
thus  Stirling  in  them  in  advance  any  inconvenient 
impulse  of  opposition  that  might  possibly  arise 


MEANS  AND  EFFECTS  81 

even  in  their  official  minds.13  By  these  means  the 
tractableness  of  the  civil  executive  is  secured,  an 
object  reached  in  regard  to  the  subalterns  and 
lower  officials  by  means  of  the  systems  giving 
preference  to  the  claims  of  former  military  per- 
sons to  public  posts.  Provision  is  thus  made  that 
class  justice  and  the  class  educational  system  shall 
bear  their  proper  military  stamp  and  that  self- 
government  u  shall  be  kept  back  with  a  firm  hand. 
Also  worthy  of  mention  is  the  order  that  officers, 
whether  in  active  service  or  not,  must  not  do  any 
literary  work,  which,  alongside  the  highly  instruc- 
tive Gadke  15  case,  is  the  most  conclusive  symptom 

18  It  should  be  explained  that  in  Germany  it  is  the  ambi- 
tion of  most  well-to-do  young  men  to  become  a  lieutenant  of 
the  reserve  after  having  served  in  the  army  for  one  year  as 
a  volunteer.  The  title  of  lieutenant  of  the  reserve  is  the  key 
to  official  society.  [TRANSLATOR.] 

14  The  bold  exploit  of  the  "captain  of  Koepenick,"  that  in- 
genious cobbler  and  jail-bird,  has  exactly  in  this  connection 
been  pointed  to  as  the  writing  on  the  wall,  and  that  also  by 
Liberals. 

18  Colonel  Gadke,  when  no  longer  in  active  service,  had 
criticized  the  German  war  minister  in  the  columns  of  the  Ber- 
liner Tageblatt,  a  radical  newspaper  whose  military  expert 
he  was  at  the  time.  The  criticism  concerned  a  speech  in  the 
Reichstag  in  which  the  minister  had  defended  the  duel. 
Gadke  had  to  appear  before  a  court  and  lost  his  military  title. 
He  then  took  the  case  before  the  imperial  (federal)  court  and 
won.  [TRANSLATOR.] 


82  MILITARISM 

of  the  reckless  desire  of  militarism  for  intellectual 
subjection  and  the  centralized  supervision  of 
everything  within  its  reach,  and  also  indicates  its 
tendency  continually  to  extend  its  sphere  of  in- 
fluence, legally  or  illegally,  its  desire  for  unlim- 
ited growth,  its  unlimited  appetite  for  power. 

OTHER  WAYS  OF  INFLUENCING  THE  CIVILIAN  POP- 
ULATION   IN    A    MILITARY    DIRECTION. 

An  even  more  important  result  of  the  militaris- 
tic hunger  for  expansion  than  the  mischievous  re- 
serve-officer system  is  the  nuisance  of  the  military 
claimant  system  in  public  employment,  which,  be- 
sides the  purely  military  purpose  mentioned,  serves 
in  no  less  a  degree  the  purpose  of  sending  into  all 
the  branches  of  the  state  and  municipal  adminis- 
tration a  band  of  always  faithful  and  enthusiastic 
representatives  and  propagandists  of  the  militaris- 
tic spirit.  By  this  method  it  is  intended  at  the 
same  time  to  insure  the  trustworthiness  and  loy- 
alty of  the  bureaucracy  serving  capitalism,  and  to 
spread  among  the  mass  of  the  people  who  are  par- 
ticularly in  need  of  education  the  "right,"  "state- 


MEANS  AND  EFFECTS  83 

conserving"  way  of  thinking.  That  "educa- 
tional" purpose  of  the  system  was  avowed  with 
touching  unanimity  and  frankness  by  Chancellor 
Caprivi  and  the  representatives  of  the  ruling 
classes  hi  the  Reichstag  debates  on  the  premiums 
for  non-commissioned  officers,  in  February,  1891. 
Thus,  after  the  corporal  had  to  leave  the  teacher's 
desk,  the  conservative  ideal  of  our  popular  educa- 
tional system  has  fortunately  arrived  again  by  a 
devious  route  at  the  non-commissioned  officer.18 

True,  the  educational  results  are  very  meagre 
ones.  The  poor  fellows  with  their  military  claims 
for  subordinate  positions  are  too  badly  paid. 
After  all,  even  a  German  non-commissioned  offi- 
cer is  not  to  be  had  indefinitely  for  a  pittance  and 
the  honor  of  serving  the  King  of  Prussia.17  It  is 
the  eternal  problem  of  buying  up  the  revolution ! 

In  this  connection  it  should  be  mentioned  that 
the  same  methods  which  are  employed  to  arouse 
and  to  keep  alive  the  military  enthusiasm  of  the 

19  Liebknecht  here  refers  to  the  former  custom  of  making 
old  superannuated  soldiers  school-teachers.  [TRANSLATOR.] 

17  There  exists  in  Germany  a  kind  of  union  of  these  offi- 
cials—The Association  of  German  Military  Gaimants  of  Civil 
Employment. 


84  MILITARISM 

soldiers  themselves,  as,  for  instance,  all  the  display 
and  pomp,  likewise  influence  the  non-military 
population,  i.  e.,  those  elements  from  whose  ranks 
the  army  is  recruited,  who  form  its  background, 
who  have  to  bear  its  expense  and  who  are  in  "dan- 
ger" of  falling  a  prey  to  the  interior  foe.  The 
British  secretary  for  war,  Mr.  Haldane,  proved 
himself  an  apt  pupil  on  his  Prussian  visit  in  the 
fall  of  1906,  when  he  learned  that.  He  expressed 
the  thought  that  a  valuable  secondary  effect  of 
militarism  was  that  it  educated  the  people  in  sober- 
mindedness  and  faithfulness  to  duty  by  bringing 
them  into  closer  contact  with  the  army  and  war 
preparations. 

Militarism  possesses  still  another  means,  but  one 
of  quite  a  different  kind,  to  spread  its  spirit,  viz., 
in  its  character  as  a  consumer  and  producer  and  in 
its  influence  over  great  industrial  undertakings  of 
the  state  which  are  of  strategical  importance. 

Quite  a  host  of  manufacturers,  tradesmen  and 
merchants,  with  their  employees,  live  by  the  army, 
people  who  take  part  in  the  production  and  the 
transportation  of  all  commodities  necessary  for 


MEANS  AND  EFFECTS  85 

its  equipment,  lodging  and  maintenance,  and  of  all 
articles  of  consumption  needed  by  the  soldiers. 
These  beneficiaries  of  the  army  often  positively 
determine  the  character  of  the  whole  public  life 
of  a  place,  especially  in  small  garrison  towns,  and 
the  most  powerful  among  them  rule  like  princes 
over  large  communities  and  play  the  first  fiddle  in 
their  state  and  in  the  empire.  They  owe  their 
influence  to  militarism  which  allows  itself  to  be 
fleeced  and  bamboozled  by  them  with  astonishing 
patience,  and  return  thanks  (one  good  turn  de- 
serves another)  by  becoming  its  most  fervent 
propagandists,  for  which  part  they  are,  of  course, 
already  cut  out  by  their  capitalist  interests.  Who 
does  not  know  the  names  of  Krupp,  Stumm,  Ehr- 
hardt,  Lowe,  Wormann,  Tippelskirch,  Nobel, 
Powder  Trust,  etc.*?  Who  has  not  heard  of 
Krupp's  usurious  rates  for  armor  plate,  of  the  Tip- 
pelskirch profits  with  the  bribes  appertaining  to 
them,  of  the  exorbitant  freight  and  demurrage 
charges  of  Wormann,  the  net  100  and  150  percent, 
profit  of  the  Powder  Trust  which  lightened  the 
purse  of  the  German  Empire  by  many  a  million*? 


86  MILITARISM 

In  Austria  the  frauds  of  the  army  contractors  have 
been  especially  sensational.  And  every  campaign 
means  for  that  parasitic  crowd  (not  only  in  Rus- 
sia) a  golden  fraudulent  harvest.  These  mighty 
gentlemen,  as  was  said  before,  repay  militarism 
like  true  Christians  for  allowing  them  to  rob  it, 
or  rather  the  people.  They  pour  out  the  holy 
ghost  of  militarism  over  "their"  workers  and  all 
that  are  dependent  on  them,  and  conduct  a  relent- 
less war  against  the  forces  of  revolution.  Of 
course,  neither  the  workmen  nor  the  great  majority 
of  the  small  army  contractors  have  a  real  material 
interest  in  the  army.  The  countries  that  have  no 
standing  army  are  certainly  not  inferior  in  general 
well-being  and  prosperity  of  commerce  and  indus- 
try to  the  countries  possessing  a  standing  army,  and 
the  persons  employed  in  the  branches  of  military 
production  certainly  would  not  be  worse  off  eco- 
nomically if  there  were  no  army.  But  as  a  rule 
they  do  not  see  beyond  their  nose  and  submit  only 
too  readily  to  the  strong  militaristic  influence,  so 
that  an  oppositional  propaganda  meets  with  great 
difficulties. 


MEANS  AND  EFFECTS  87 

As  an  employer  in  great  industrial  undertakings 
(such  as  military  store-houses,  canning  factories, 
clothing  factories,  remount-depots,  arms  and  muni- 
tion factories,  navy  yards,  etc.)  militarism  does 
not  only  willingly  and  exclusively  hand  over  its 
employees  (on  October  31,  1904,  there  were  alto- 
gether 54,723  persons  employed  in  industrial  es- 
tablishments owned  by  the  administration  of  the 
German  army  and  navy)  to  all  reactionary 
patriotic  demagogues,  as,  for  example,  the  imperial 
anti-socialist  union,  it  also  attempts  to  permeate 
them  systematically  and  ruthlessly  with  the 
patriotic  militaristic  spirit,  by  bestowing  titles  and 
decorations  on  them,  arranging  for  them  festivals 
in  the  manner  of  the  veterans'  associations,  prom- 
ising them  impossible  pensions,  by  outlawing  the 
trade  union  and  introducing  into  its  shops  a  verit- 
able barracks  discipline.  Among  the  government 
work-shops  the  shops  of  the  military  administra- 
tion present  the  hardest  problem  in  the  campaign 
for  the  enlightenment  of  the  proletariat.  There  is 
naturally  a  limit  to  the  influence  exercised  by  the 
forces  hostile  to  the  labor  movement,  and  it  can 


88  MILITARISM 

hardly  be  that  the  administration  of  the  army  still 
cherishes  any  illusions  in  view  of  the  Social  Demo- 
cratic successes,  especially  among  the  workers  at 
the  imperial  navy  yards.  The  very  childish  threat 
to  close  down  the  military  shops  in  case  the  Social 
Democratic  vote  among  the  workers  should  in- 
crease, a  threat  employed  at  Spandau  during  the 
election  of  1903,  can  impede  the  spreading  of 
class-consciousness  as  little  as  any  other  threat,  so 
long  as  militarism  by  giving  its  workers  niggardly 
proletarian  pay  makes  them  over  to  the  Social 
Democracy.  One  need  but  recall  the  frequent 
wage  movements  in  the  royal  factories,  the  numer- 
ous conflicts  of  the  men  employed  there  with  the 
military  administration,  conflicts  which  often  as- 
sume an  animated  form,  in  order  to  overcome  one's 
pessimism  in  regard  to  these  workers. 

The  railroads,  the  postal  and  telegraphic  ser- 
vices are  institutions  of  decisive  strategical  im- 
portance, not  only  for  the  war  against  the  exterior, 
but  also  for  the  war  against  the  interior  enemy. 
Those  indispensable  strategical  factors  can  be 
made  useless  for  militarism  by  a  strike,  which 


MEANS  AND  EFFECTS  89 

would  lead  to  a  complete  paralysis  of  the  military 
organism.  It  is  therefore  quite  natural  that  mili- 
tarism should  earnestly  strive  to  imbue  with  its 
spirit  the  minds  of  the  officials  and  workmen  be- 
longing to  the  staffs  of  those  industries  of  com- 
munication and  the  factories  connected  with  them 
(railroad-shops,  car  factories,  etc.).  The  unscru- 
pulous manner  in  which  this  purpose  is  being  pur- 
sued is  not  only  demonstrated  by  the  system  of 
military  claimants  for  civil  employment,  pre- 
viously described,  but  also  by  the  fact  that  in  sev- 
eral states  those  employees  have  been  placed  under 
the  military  law;  it  is  further  shown  by  their  po- 
litical condition,  in  the  militarist  countries  where 
they  have  been  deprived  of  the  right  of  combina- 
tion either  by  administrative  procedure  (as  in  Ger- 
many and  France)  or  by  special  laws  (as  in  Italy, 
Holland,  and  also  Russia).  Naturally,  we  do  not 
deny  that  apart  from  those  military  interests  the 
capitalist  state  guards  its  general  interests  in  pre- 
venting its  employees  in  those  industries  of  com- 
munication from  being  captured  by  its  enemies. 
Those  efforts,  too,  will  necessarily  be  fruitless  in 


90  MILITARISM 

the  long  run,  however  great  the  difficulties  they 
prepare  for  the  labor  movement.  They  fail  on 
account  of  inadequate  wages,  on  account  of  the 
positively  proletarian  mode  of  existence  of  the  em- 
ployees of  the  communication  systems. 

MILITARISM    AS    MACHIAVELLISM    AND    AS    A 
POLITICAL    REGULATOR. 

Militarism  thus  appears  in  the  first  place  in  the 
army  itself,  then  as  a  system  reaching  beyond  the 
army  and  embracing  all  of  society  in  a  net  of  mili- 
taristic and  semi-militaristic  institutions  (such  as 
the  control  system,  the  prohibition  of  literary 
activity,  court  of  honor,  the  reserve-officer  system, 
the  provision  for  time-expired  non-commissioned 
officers,  the  militarization  of  the  whole  bureau- 
cratic apparatus  [due  above  all  to  the  mischievous 
reserve-officer  system  and  the  military  claimants 
for  public  positions],  cadet  corps,  veterans'  asso- 
ciations, etc.) ;  further  as  a  system  of  saturating 
the  whole  private  and  public  life  of  our  people 
with  the  military  spirit  for  which  purpose  the 
church,  the  schools,  and  a  certain  venal  art,  as  well 


MEANS  AND  EFFECTS  91 

as  the  press,  a  despicable  literary  crowd  and  the 
social  prestige,  with  which  our  "splendid  war 
army"  is  ever  being  surrounded  as  by  a  halo,  co- 
operate in  a  tenacious  and  cunning  fashion.  By 
the  side  of  the  Catholic  Church  militarism  repre- 
sents the  acme  of  Machiavellism  in  the  world's 
history  and  the  most  Machiavellian  among 
all  the  Machiavellian  institutions  of  capital- 
ism. 

The  exploit  of  the  Kopenick  cobbler-captain, 
previously  mentioned,  may  be  regarded  as  a  com- 
pendium of  that  whole  militaristic  art  of  education 
and  its  results,  the  most  sublime  of  which  is  the 
veritable  canonization  of  the  officer's  coat  by  the 
whole  bourgeois  society.  In  an  examination,  last- 
ing six  hours,  to  which  this  jail-bird  subjected  a 
sample  of  our  army,  our  bureaucratic  apparatus 
and  the  allegiance  of  the  Prussian  subject,  all  these 
probationers  passed  with  such  great  honors  that 
even  their  teachers  were  speechless  with  astonish- 
ment at  that  quintessence  of  their  pedagogy.  No 
Gessler's  hat  has  ever  found  such  willing  submis- 
sion and  self-humiliation  as  the  cap  of  the  immor- 


92  MILITARISM 

tal  Captain  of  Kopenick,  no  holy  coat  of  Treves 
has  ever  been  worshipped  so  religiously  as  his  uni- 
form. That  classical  satire  whose  enormous  effec- 
tiveness consists  in  its  having  hunted  to  death  mili- 
tarism's own  pedagogic  principles,  ought  to  hunt 
to  death  militarism  amidst  the  scornful  laughter  of 
the  world  if — yes,  if  that  same  bourgeois  society, 
which  in  regard  to  militarism  now  finds  itself  for 
the  moment  in  the  position  of  the  sorcerer's  ap- 
prentice who  evoked  the  spirits  but  could  not  get 
rid  of  them,  did  not  need  militarism  as  badly  as  its 
daily  bread  and  the  air  it  breathes.  The  same  old 
tragical  conflict.  Capitalism  and  its  powerful 
major-domo,  militarism,  do  not  love  each  other  at 
all,  but  rather  fear  and  hate  each  other,  for  which 
they  have  many  a  reason;  they  look  upon  each 
other  (for  the  major-domo  has  acquired  sufficient 
independence)  only  as  a  necessary  evil,  for  which 
again  they  have  many  a  reason.  The  lesson  of 
Kopenick  which  bourgeois  society  can  not  turn  to 
its  profit  will  therefore  only  remain  a  convincing 
argument  for  anti-militarist  propaganda,  for  the 
Social  Democracy  which  flourishes  all  the  more  the 


MEANS  AND  EFFECTS  93 

more  militarism  pushes  its  principles  to  their  ex- 
treme conclusions. 

What  the  Captain  of  Kopenick  means  for  mili- 
tarism in  the  domain  of  practical  swindling,  the  in- 
imitable Gustav  Tuch  was  for  it  in  the  domain  of 
honest  theorizing,  towards  the  end  of  the  eighties. 
In  his  bulky  volume,  "The  Expanded  German 
Military  State  in  its  Social  Significance,"  he 
sketched  a  future  society  of  which  the  all  illumin- 
ating, wanning,  directing  central  sun  is  militarism, 
its  heart  and  soul,  the  only  true  "national  and  civi- 
lized socialism";  where  the  whole  state  is  trans- 
formed into  the  image  of  the  barracks,  the  bar- 
racks being  grammar  school,  high-school  and  a 
factory  for  producing  patriotic  spirit,  the  army  an 
all  comprising  organization  of  strike-breakers.- 
That  ecstatic  hallucination  about  the  millennium 
of  militarism  was  indeed  mere  methodical  mad- 
ness, but  the  very  fact  that  it  was  a  methodical 
madness,  which  imagined  the  militaristic  aims  and 
methods  apart  from  all  checks  and  carried  them  to 
their  extreme  conclusions,  lends  to  it  a  symp- 
tomatic significance. 


94  MILITARISM 

At  least  in  one  sphere  of  prime  importance  mili- 
tarism, as  will  be  shown  more  conclusively  later 
on,  is  to-day  already  the  central  sun  around  which 
move  the  solar  systems  of  class  legislation,  bureau- 
cracy, police  rule,  class- justice  and  the  clericalism 
of  all  denominations.  It  is  the  ultimate,  some- 
times recondite,  sometimes  patent  regulator  of  all 
class  politics,  all  tactics  of  the  class-struggle,  not 
only  for  the  capitalist  classes,  but  also  for  the  pro- 
letariat, in  regard  to  its  economic  organization  no 
less  than  in  regard  to  its  political  organization. 


IV. 

CONCERNING  SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  OF  MILITARISM. 

MALTREATMENT    OF    SOLDIERS    OR    MILITARISM 

AS    A    REPENTANT,    YET    UNREFORMED 

SINNER. 

TWO  DILEMMAS. 

THE  militarists  are  not  all  dull-witted.  That  is 
proven  by  the  extremely  clever  educational  system 
they  have  introduced.  With  noteworthy  skill 
they  rely  upon  mass  psychology.  The  army  of 
Frederick,  composed  of  mercenaries  and  the  scum 
of  the  population,  had  to  be  kept  together  for  its 
mechanical  tasks  by  pipe-clay  drill  and  thrashings. 
That  is  no  longer  possible  in  an  army  formed  on 
the  basis  of  a  civic  duty  and  placing  much  greater 
demands  upon  the  individual.  This  was  clearly 
recognized  at  once  by  men  like  Scharnhorst  and 
Gneisenau,1  whose  army  reorganization  began 

1  The  men  that  reorganized  the  entire  Prussian  army  sys- 
tem after  the  Prussian  army  had  been  shattered  at  Jena  by 
Napoleon,  in  1806.  [TRANSLATOR.] 

95 


96  MILITARISM 

with  the  proclamation  of  the  "freedom  of  the 
back."  Yet,  bad  treatment,  brutal  insults,  beat- 
ings and  all  kinds  of  cruel  maltreatment  belong 
also  to  the  stock-in-trade  of  our  present  system  of 
military  education. 

The  attitude  of  military  circles  toward  the  mal- 
treatment of  soldiers  is  naturally  not  determined 
by  considerations  of  ethics,  civilization,  humanity, 
justice,  Christianity  and  other  fine  things,  but 
purely  by  Jesuitical  expedients.  The  hidden  dan- 
ger which  that  maltreatment  constitutes  for  the 
discipline  and  the  "spirit"  of  the  army  itself a 
has  not  even  to-day  been  generally  recognized.3 
The  ragging  of  new  recruits  and  recalcitrants  by 
the  older  men,  the  brutal  barracks  jokes  and  vulgar 

2  In  Manteuffel's  sensible  command  of  April  18,  1885,  we 
read:    "Insults  attack  the  sense  of  honor  and  kill   it,  and 
the  officer  who  insults  his  subordinates  undermines  his  own 
position;  for  there  is  no  dependence  on  the  loyalty  or  bravery 
of  him  who  allows  himself  to  be  insulted."  .  .  .  "In  a  word — 
as  the  subordinates  are  treated  by  their  superiors,  from  the 
general  to  the  lieutenant,  thus  they  are." 

3  A  slight  indication  is  furnished  by  the  mass  of  deserters 
and  men  liable  to  military  service  who  disobeyed  orders  to 
join  the  army.    No  less  than  15,000  German  deserters  perished 
in  the  French  colonial  army  during  the  first  thirty  years  of  the 
existence  of  the  "splendid  German  Empire,"  whilst  the  bloody 
battle  of  Vionville  in  the  Franco-German  War  resulted  in  only 
16,000  men  being  killed  and  wounded. 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  97 

language  of  all  kind,  and  the  fairly  frequent 
knocks  and  blows  and  hazing,  are  heartily  ap- 
proved without  scruple  and  are  even  positively  con- 
sidered necessary  by  the  majority  of  non-com- 
missioned officers  and  even  officers,  who,  estranged 
from  and  hostile  to  the  people,  have  been  trained 
to  become  the  most  narrow-minded  petty  despots. 
The  fight  against  those  outrages  therefore  meets 
almost  at  the  outset,  with  an  all  but  insuperable 
passive  resistance.  Privately,  but  not  publicly, 
one  may  hear  daily  how  superiors  describe  the  de- 
sire for  decent  treatment  of  the  "fellows"  as  a 
symptom  of  a  silly  humanitarian  soft-headedness. 
Military  service  is  a  rude  business.  But  even 
where  they  have  thoroughly  recognized  the  hidden 
dangers  of  disciplinary  maltreatments  they  find 
themselves  again  in  face  of  one  of  those  disagree- 
able alternatives  at  which  a  system  based  on  brute 
force  and  setting  itself  against  the  natural  develop- 
ment must  always  arrive,  and  several  of  which  we 
have  already  pointed  out.  For  those  maltreat- 
ments are  indeed  (as  we  shall  show  more  conclu- 
sively) indispensable  auxiliaries  of  the  external 


98  MILITARISM 

drill  which  capitalist  militarism,  (for  which  the  in- 
ward voluntary  discipline  is  an  unattainable  goal), 
can  not  dispense  with  for  want  of  a  better  method. 
We  repeat  that  they  are  considered,  not  officially, 
it  is  true,  but  semi-officially,  in  spite  of  all  the 
scruples  and  regrets  we  hear  expressed,  not  as  a 
legal,  but  as  an  indispensable  means  of  military 
education. 

But  apart  from  military  scruples,  our  militarists 
suffer  from  a  bad  conscience  since  they  have  been 
caught  at  their  game,  i.  e.,  since  the  relentless 
Social  Democratic  criticism  of  the  army  institu- 
tions began  and  large  portions  of  the  middle-class 
commenced  to  disavow  that  military  morality. 
With  a  gnashing  of  teeth  militarism  had  to  ac- 
knowledge that  it  was  not  simply  devised  and 
commanded  by  the  supreme  war  lord,  but  that  it 
depends,  especially  in  regard  to  its  material  exist- 
ence, on  the  popular  representative  body  on  which 
it  looks  with  such  scornful  disdain — on  the  Reich- 
stag which  includes  even  representatives  of  the 
"mob" ;  in  short,  that  it  depends  on  the  "rabble" 
and  that  under  cover  of  their  immunity  the  peo- 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  99 

pie's  representatives  in  the  Reichstag  pitilessly 
exposed  its  nakedness  again  and  again.  In  sullen 
rage  it  saw  itself  obliged  to  maintain  the  good 
mood  of  those  plebeians,  those  Reichstag  fellows, 
that  despised  and  derided  "public  opinion."  The 
problem  was,  not  to  put  to  too  hard  a  test  the 
devout  belief  in  militarism  possessed  by  the  bour- 
geoisie who,  as  a  rule,  were  ready  to  grant  all  pos- 
sible military  demands  but  who,  especially  in  times 
of  financial  troubles,  were  not  rarely  apt  to  kick 
against  the  pricks;  moreover,  things  had  to  be 
made  easier  for  the  bourgeoisie  when  the  latter 
were  dealing  with  their  voters,  largely  anti-mili- 
tarists, because  of  their  social  position,  and  ready 
to  embrace  Social  Democracy  when  they  recognize 
their  class  interests.  Such  weapons  as  were  likely 
to  be  most  effective  had  to  be  withheld  or  snatched 
from  Social  Democratic  propagandists;  so  mili- 
tarism had  recourse  to  the  tactics  of  hushing-up 
and  concealment.  The  procedure  of  the  military 
courts  was  secret,  not  a  ray  penetrated  that  dark- 
ness, and  if  one  succeeded  in  penetrating  it  things 
were  denied,  disputed  and  extenuated  with  might 


ioo  MILITARISM 

and  main.  But  the  torch  of  Social  Democracy 
sent  its  light  farther  and  farther,  even  to  behind 
the  barracks  walls  and  through  the  bars  of  the 
military  prisons  and  fortresses.  The  military  de- 
bates that  took  place  in  the  German  Reichstag  in 
the  eighties  and  nineties  of  the  last  century  consti- 
tute a  tenacious  and  passionate  fight  for  the  recog- 
nition of  the  fact  that  the  atrocities  of  the  barracks 
are  not  rare  and  isolated  phenomena  but  regular, 
extraordinarily  frequent,  organic,  constitutional 
occurrences,  as  it  were,  in  military  life.  In  that 
fight  effective  service  was  rendered  by  the  pub- 
licity of  the  procedure  of  military  courts  in  other 
countries,  proving  that  military  maltreatment  is  a 
regular  attribute  of  militarism,  even  of  republican 
militarism  in  France,  even  of  Belgian  militarism, 
even  in  a  growing  degree  of  the  Swiss  militia  mili- 
tarism. 

The  impression  created  by  the  army  orders  of 
Prince  George  of  Saxony  (of  June  8,  1891 ),  which 
were  published  by  the  Vorwdrts  at  the  beginning 
of  1892;  and  by  the  orders  of  the  Bavarian  war 
minister  (  December  13,  1891)  ;  and  by  the  Reich- 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  101 

stag  debates,  which  lasted  from  February  15  to  17, 
1892,  was  mainly  responsible  for  the  effect  which 
the  Social  Democratic  criticism  exercised.  After 
the  usual  "due  considerations"  and  scufflings  the 
reform  of  our  procedure  in  military  trials  was 
brought  about  in  1898  with  a  great  amount  of 
painful  exertion.  True,  the  reformed  procedure 
still  permitted  the  courts  to  a  large  extent  to  ex- 
clude the  public  and  thus  to  cover  the  terrible 
secrets  of  the  barracks  with  the  cloak  of  Christian 
charity,  but  it  succeeded  (in  spite  of  all  the  orders 
which  almost  suggested  the  most  sweeping  use  of 
the  powers  of  excluding  the  public  and  in  spite  of 
the  much  discussed  disciplining  of  the  judges  in 
the  Bilse  case)  in  bringing  down  such  a  hail  of  ap- 
palling cases  of  maltreatment  upon  the  heads  of 
the  public  that  all  objections  against  the  Social 
Democratic  criticism  were  simply  swept  away,  and 
the  existence  of  the  maltreatment  of  soldiers  as  a 
settled  institution  of  "state-conserving"  militarism 
was  acknowledged  almost  everywhere,  however  re- 
luctantly. More  or  less  honestly  the  authorities 
attempted  to  grapple  with  this  repelling  institution 


102  MILITARISM 

which  proved  of  too  great  an  advantage  to  the 
socialist  propaganda,  and  though  they  did  not  be- 
lieve in  any  substantial  success,  they  yet  wanted  to 
arouse  the  impression  of  dislike  for  the  institution 
and  readiness  to  try  their  best  to  abolish  it.  They 
began  to  hunt  down  with  a  certain  amount  of 
severity  those  guilty  of  maltreating  soldiers,  but 
militarism  has  after  all  a  greater  interest  in  main- 
taining military  discipline,  in  training  the  people 
in  arms  to  be  docile  fighters  in  the  struggle  against 
their  own  international  and  national  interests,  than 
in  attacking  the  maltreatment  of  soldiers.  It  is 
instructive  to  compare  the  sentences  passed  upon 
the  basest  tormentors  of  soldiers  with  those  pro- 
nounced almost  daily  upon  soldiers  for  often  quite 
petty  offences  against  their  superiors,  or  for  of- 
fences committed  in  a  state  of  excitement  or  in- 
toxication by  soldiers  against  their  superiors.  For 
the  soldier  there  is  a  blood-thirsty,  Draconic  pun- 
ishment for  the  smallest  sin  against  the  holy  ghost 
of  militarism;  for  the  other  offender  there  is,  in 
spite  of  all,  a  relatively  mild  indulgence  and  un- 
derstanding. Thus  the  campaign  of  the  military 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  103 

courts  against  the  maltreatment  of  soldiers,  con- 
ducted parallel  with  a  campaign  to  throttle  every 
vestige  of  an  impulse  on  the  part  of  the  subordi- 
nate to  exhibit  a  consciousness  of  self-dependence 
or  equality,  naturally  fails  of  practical  result. 
The  whole  story  is  told  by  the  case  of  the  Heredi- 
tary Prince  of  Saxe-Meiningen  who  had  sufficient 
courage  to  call  upon  the  men  themselves  to  assist 
in  the  campaign  against  maltreatment  so  as  to  be 
able  to  attack  the  evil  more  energetically  than  ever 
before  at  the  root.  He  was,  however,  soon  forced 
to  quit  the  army  on  account  of  this  bold  step. 
The  incident  brightly  illuminates  the  whole  use- 
lessness  and  hopelessness  of  the  official  campaign 
against  the  maltreatment  of  soldiers. 

The  little  book  written  by  our  comrade  Rudolf 
Krafft,  a  former  officer  of  the  Bavarian  army,  on 
"The  Victims  of  the  Barracks"  treats  valuable 
material  with  the  expert  knowledge  that  can  only 
come  from  inside  information.  Regular  compila- 
tions of  trials  for  maltreating  soldiers  (or  sailors), 
made  by  the  Socialist  press  at  certain  intervals, 
furnish  a  positively  overwhelming  mass  of  mate- 


104  MILITARISM 

rial  which  has  unfortunately  not  yet  been  edited. 
An  important  and  thankful  task  is  awaiting  some 
one. 

Being  fundamentally  opposed  to  militarism  we 
have  no  delusions  about  it.  Scharnhorst,  in  his 
"Order  Concerning  Military  Punishments," 
writes :  "Experience  teaches  that  recruits  can  be 
taught  the  drill  without  beating  them.  An  officer 
to  whom  this  may  appear  impossible  lacks  the 
necessary  faculty  of  instruction  or  has  no  clear  idea 
of  training."  Of  course,  theoretically  he  is  right, 
but  practically  he  is  far  in  advance  of  the  times. 
The  maltreatment  of  soldiers  springs  from  the 
very  essence  of  capitalist  militarism.  A  large  pro- 
portion of  the  men  is  intellectually,  a  still  larger 
proportion  physically,  not  equal  to  the  military  re- 
quirements, especially  not  equal  to  those  of  the 
parade  drill.  The  number  of  the  young  men  hav- 
ing a  view  of  life  that  is  dangerous  and  hostile  to 
militarism,  who  enter  the  army  increases  con- 
tinually. The  problem  is  to  tear  that  soul  out  of 
those  "fellows,"  as  it  were,  and  replace  it  by  a  new 
patriotic  soul,  loyal  to  the  king.  Even  the  most 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  105 

skilful  pedagogue  finds  it  impossible  to  solve  all 
those  problems,  let  alone  the  kind  of  teachers 
available  to  militarism,  which  must  in  this  respect, 
too,  be  more  economical  than  it  would  like  to  be. 

The  militaristic  pedagogues  have  but  a  preca- 
rious subsistence.  They  depend  entirely  on  the 
good  will,  on  the  arbitrariness  of  their  superior, 
and  must  expect  every  minute  to  be  thrown  out  of 
employment  if  they  do  not  accomplish  their  chief 
task,  that  of  forming  the  soldier  in  the  image  of 
militarism — an  excellent  expedient  to  make  the 
whole  apparatus  of  the  military  hierarchy  ex- 
tremely pliant  in  the  hands  of  the  supreme  com- 
mand. It  goes  without  saying  that  such  superiors 
drill  their  men  with  a  nervous  lack  of  consider- 
ation, that  they  soon  come  to  the  point  where  they 
use  force  instead  of  persuasion  and  example,  and 
that  such  force,  owing  to  the  absolute  power  which 
the  superior  has  over  the  life  and  death  of  his 
subordinate  who  has  to  submit  to  him  uncondi- 
tionally, is  finally  applied  in  the  shape  of  mal- 
treaments.  All  this  is  a  natural  and,  humanly 
speaking,  necessary  concatenation  in  which  the 


106  MILITARISM 

new  Japanese  militarism,  too,  has  promptly  got  en- 
tangled. It  is  another  dilemma  of  militarism. 

The  causes  of  such  maltreatments  are  not  to  be 
met  with  everywhere  in  a  uniform  degree.  It  is 
above  all  the  degree  of  popular  education  which 
exercises  a  strongly  modifying  influence,  and  it  is 
not  surprising  that  even  French  colonial  militarism 
forms  in  this  respect  a  favorable  contrast  to  the 
Prussian-German  home  militarism. 

It  is  exactly  in  this  form  of  exercising  disci- 
plinary power,  and  just  in  that  necessity  by  which 
it  arises  out  of  the  system,  that  we  Socialists  find 
an  excellent  weapon  with  which  to  combat  mili- 
tarism fundamentally  and  most  successfully, 
arousing  against  it  an  ever  growing  portion  of  the 
people  and  carrying  class-consciousness  into  groups 
that  otherwise  could  not  yet  be  reached  or  could 
only  be  reached  with  much  greater  difficulty.  The 
maltreatment  of  soldiers  and  military  class-justice, 
one  of  the  most  provoking  phenomena  of  capitalist 
barbarism,  are  not  only  dangerously  undermining 
military  discipline,  they  are  also  the  most  effective 
weapons  in  the  war  for  the  liberation  of  the  pro- 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  107 

letariat.  That  sin  of  capitalism  turns  against 
capitalism  itself  in  two  ways.  However  much  the 
sinner  may  repent,  honestly  in  helpless  contrition, 
or  in  the  style  of  the  fox  in  the  fable,  those  weap- 
ons can  not  be  taken  away  from  us ;  for  though  he 
appears  in  sackcloth  and  ashes  the  sinner  is  irre- 
claimable. 


THE    COSTS    OF    MILITARISM    OR    LA 
DOULOUREUSE. 

Another  Dilemma. 

Historical  materialism,  the  doctrine  of  dialecti- 
cal evolution,  is  the  doctrine  of  the  inherent  neces- 
sity of  retribution.  Every  society  divided  in 
classes  is  condemned  to  commit  suicide.  Every 
society  divided  in  classes  is  a  force  that  ever  wills 
the  evil  and  accomplishes  the  good  and,  even  if  it 
did  not  will  the  evil,  must  do  the  evil;  it  must 
perish  through  the  original  sin  of  its  class  charac- 
ter; it  must,  whether  it  wants  to  or  not,  beget  the 
CEdipus  who  will  slay  it  one  day,  but,  unlike  the 
fabled  Theban,  with  the  full  consciousness  of  com- 


io8  MILITARISM 

mitting  parricide.  That  is  at  least  true  with  re- 
gard to  the  capitalist  order  of  society,  with  regard 
to  the  proletariat.  Of  course,  the  ruling  class  of 
capitalism,  too,  would  very  much  like  to  enjoy  its 
profits  in  complete  comfort  and  security.  But 
since  that  comfort  and  security  neither  agree  with 
the  national  and  international  capitalist  competi- 
tion nor  with  the  permanent  taste  of  those  at  whose 
expense  it  lives,  capitalism  erects  for  the  protec- 
tion of  wage  slavery  round  the  sanctum  of  profit  a 
cruel  fortress  of  despotism,  bristling  with  arms. 
Though  militarism  be  a  vital  necessity  of  capi- 
talism, the  latter  is  naturally  not  pleased  with  the 
gigantic  expense  of  militarism  and  considers  it  at 
heart  as  a  very  disagreeable  burden.  However,  as 
it  is  impossible  today  to  follow  the  old  Cadmean 
recipe  of  sowing  dragon's  teeth  in  order  to  make 
the  ground  yield  armed  soldiers,  there  is  nothing 
to  be  done  but  putting  up  with  Moloch  Militarism 
and  feeding  its  insatiable  appetite.  The  annual 
financial  debates  in  the  various  parliaments  dem- 
onstrate how  painful  a  subject  this  quality  of  mili- 
tarism is  to  the  ruling  classes,  Capitalism,  hui> 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  109 

gering  for  surplus  value,  can  only  be  impressed  by 
touching  the  financial  spot,  its  constitutional  weak 
spot.  The  expense  of  militarism  is  the  only  thing 
that  keeps  it  in  bounds,  at  least  as  far  as  it  is  borne 
by  the  bourgeoisie  itself.  The  ethics  of  profiteer- 
ing, however,  seeks  and  finds  a  way  out  that  is  as 
easy  as  it  is  base — the  shifting  of  the  greatest  or  a 
great  part  of  the  military  burdens  to  the  shoulders 
of  those  parts  of  the  population  that  are  not  only 
the  weakest,  but  for  whose  oppression  and  torture 
militarism  is  chiefly  established.  Like  the  ruling 
classes  of  other  social  orders  the  capitalist  classes 
use  their  despotism,  which  is  moreover  based  in  the 
first  place  on  the  exploitation  of  the  proletariat, 
not  only  in  order  to  make  the  oppressed  and  ex- 
ploited classes  forge  their  own  chains,  but  also  to 
make  them  pay  for  themselves  for  those  chains  to 
as  large  an  extent  as  possible.  Not  content  with 
turning  the  sons  of  the  people  into  the  execu- 
tioners of  the  people  they  press  the  executioners' 
pay  as  much  as  possible  out  of  the  sweat  and  blood 
of  the  people.  And  though  here  and  there  one  is 
sensible  of  the  bitterly  provoking  effect  of  that 


no  MILITARISM 

infamous  outrage,  capitalism  remains  true  to  its 
faith  unto  death,  its  faith  in  the  golden  calf. 

To  be  sure,  that  shifting  of  the  military  burdens 
on  to  the  shoulders  of  the  poorer  classes  dimin- 
ishes the  possibility  of  exploiting  those  classes. 
That  can  not  be  explained  away,  and  that  likewise 
contributes  to  the  annoyance  of  capitalism,  ever 
intent  on  exploitation,  at  Moloch. 

Militarism  rests  like  a  leaden  weight  on  our 
whole  life.  It  is  particularly,  however,  a  leaden 
weight  for  our  economic  life,  a  nightmare  under 
which  our  economic  life  is  groaning,  a  vampire 
sucking  its  blood,  because  it  withdraws  the  best 
energies  of  the  people  from  production  and  the 
works  of  civilization  continually,  year  after  year 
(In  Germany  there  are  at  the  moment  of  writing 
655,000  of  the  strongest  and  most  productive  men, 
mostly  between  the  ages  of  20  and  22,  perma- 
nently in  the  army  and  navy),  and  also  because  of 
its  insane  direct  costs.  In  Germany  the  military 
and  naval  budget,  which  is  increasing  by  leaps, 
amounted  in  the  year  1906-07  (inclusive  of  the 
colonial  budget,  but  exclusive  of  the  supplemen- 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  ill 

tary  estimates)  to  more  than  1,300, 000,000  marks, 
say  one  billion  and  a  third.4  The  costs  to  the 
other  military  states  are  relatively  not  smaller,5 
and  the  military  expenditure  of  even  richer  coun- 
tries, such  as  the  United  States,  Great  Britain 
(which,  in  1904-05,  had  an  army  and  navy  bud- 
get of  1,321,000,000),  Belgium  and  Switzerland, 
is  so  extraordinary  that  it  occupies  a  dominating 
position.in  the  budgets  of  those  countries.  Every- 
where the  tendency  is  in  the  direction  of  a  bound- 
less increase,  close  to  the  limits  of  the  ability  to 
pay. 

The  following  interesting  compilation  is  found 
in  the  Nouveau  Manuel  du  soldat: 

"In  1899  Europe  had  a  military  budget  of 

7,184,321,093  francs. 
It  employed  in  a  military  capacity 

4,169,321  men, 
who,  if  they  were  to  work,  could  produce,  at  the 

4  Every  soldier  fighting  in  German  Southwest  Africa  meant 
an  annual  expense  of  9,500  marks  to  the  German  Empire  in 
1006. 

8  In  France,  for  instance,  in  1005:  1,101,260,000  francs. 
Since  1870  France  has  spent  some  40  billion  francs  for  military 
purposes  (exclusive  of  the  colonies). 


112  MILITARISM 

rate  of  three  francs  per  day  per  man,  the  value  of 

12,507,963  francs  a  day. 
Europe  further  used  for  military  purposes 

7 10,342  horses 

which,  at  a  rate  of  two  francs  per  day  per  horse, 
could  produce  a  value  of 

1,420,684  francs  a  day. 

Adding  that  sum  to  the  12,507,963  francs  we 
obtain  a  total  of 

13,928,647  francs. 

Multiplied  by  300  that  sum  shows,  together 
with  the  budget,  a  lost  productive  value  of 

11,915,913  francs." 

But  in  Germany  alone  the  military  budget  in- 
creased from  1899  to  1906-07  from  920,000,000 
to  about  1,300,000,000,  more  than  40  percent. 
For  the  whole  of  Europe  the  total  amount  of  mili- 
tary "overhead  charges,"  not  counting  the  costs  of 
the  Russo-Japanese  War,  reaches  at  the  moment 
of  writing  some 

-  13,000,000,000  marks  per  annum, 
say  13  percent,  of  the  total  foreign  trade  of  the 
world.     In  truth  a  veritable  policy  of  bankruptcy ! 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  113 

In  the  Russian  Baltic  provinces  the  military  sup- 
pression of  the  revolutionary  movement  was  for  a 
long  time  confided  to  the  very  barons  affected  by 
that  movement.  In  a  similar  manner  America  has 
realized  the  "unlimited  possibility"  of  leaving  the 
maintenance  of  capitalist  order  even  in  times  of 
peace  to  the  employers,  as  a  concession  to  be  ex- 
ploited, as  it  were.  Thus,  the  Pinkertons  have 
fairly  become  a  legal  institution  for  the  class-strug- 
gle. At  all  events,  that  institution,  like  its  Bel- 
gian counterpart,  the  civic  guard,  has  the  advan- 
tage of  reducing  those  effects  of  militarism  which 
are  disagreeable  even  to  the  bourgeoisie  (maltreat- 
ment of  soldiers,  expense,  etc.)  and  of  partly  with- 
holding some  highly  effective  material  for  agita- 
tion from  the  enemies  of  the  capitalist  order  of 
society.  However,  as  has  been  explained,  that 
way  out  of  the  difficulty,  which  is  moreover  any- 
thing but  pleasant  for  the  proletariat,  is  as  a  rule 
blocked  to  the  capitalist  countries,  and  the  intro- 
duction of  the  much  less  burdensome  militia  sys- 
tem is  for  a  predeterminable  time  denied  them  be- 
cause of  the  function  the  army  has  to  perform  at 


ii4  MILITARISM 

home  in  the  class-struggle,  a  function  which  is  even 
developing  a  pronounced  feeling  in  favor  of  the 
abolition  of  the  existing  militias. 

Comparing  the  entire  budget  of  the  German 
Empire  for  1906-07,  which  amounted  to  2,397,- 
324,000  marks,  with  that  portion  of  it  devoted  to 
the  army  and  navy,  we  notice  that  all  the  other 
items  play  only  the  part  of  small  satellites  to  that 
mighty  sum,  that  the  entire  fiscal  system,  the  entire 
financial  system  group  themselves  round  the  mili- 
tary budget — "as  the  host  of  the  stars  are  mus- 
tered round  the  sun,"  as  the  poet  says. 

Hence  militarism  dangerously  impedes,  and 
often  makes  impossible  even  such  progress  in  civil- 
ization as  in  itself  would  advance  the  interest  of 
the  existing  social  order.  Education,  art  and 
science,  public  sanitation,  the  communication  sys- 
tem: all  are  treated  in  a  niggardly  fashion  since 
there  is  nothing  left  for  works  of  civilization  after 
gluttonous  Moloch  has  been  fed.  The  ministerial 
declaration  that  the  obligations  of  civilization6 


6  "Kulturaufgaben" — a  very  difficult  word  to  translate  cor- 
rectly.   The  lately  much  derided  German  word  Kultur  does 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  115 

did  not  suffer,  convinced  at  most  the  East  Elbian 
junkers  with  their  low  cultural  demands  whilst  it 
could  not  wring  more  than  an  indulgent  smile  from 
the  other  representatives  of  capitalist  society. 
Figures  furnish  the  proof.  It  suffices  to  compare 
the  one  billion  and  a  third  of  the  German  military 
budget  of  1906  with  the  171  millions  that  Prussia 
spent  for  all  kinds  of  educational  purposes,  or  the 
420  millions  that  Austria  spent  for  military  pur- 
poses in  1900  with  the  5^2  millions  she  spent  for 
elementary  education.  The  latest  Prussian  school 
maintenance  law,  with  its  niggardly  settlement  of 
the  question  of  teachers'  salaries,  and  the  notorious 
Studt  decree  against  the  raising  of  teachers'  sal- 
aries in  the  cities  speak  volumes. 

Germany  should  be  rich  enough  to  fulfil  all  her 
tasks  of  civilization,  and  the  more  completely  these 
tasks  should  be  performed  the  easier  it  would  be  to 
bear  their  costs.  But  the  barrier  of  militarism 
obstructs  the  road. 

Quite  especially  provoking  is  the  way  in  which 
the  expenses  of  militarism  are  defrayed  in  Ger- 

not  merely  signify  material  civilization,  but  civilized  life  in  its 
widest  aspect  [TRANSLATOR.] 


ii6  .MILITARISM 

many — and  elsewhere,  in  France,  for  instance.  It 
can  almost  be  said  that  militarism  is  the  creator 
and  preserver  of  our  oppressive,  unjust  system  of 
indirect  taxation.  The  entire  tariff  and  taxation 
system  of  the  Empire,  which  amounts  to  a  squeez- 
ing-out  of  the  masses,  i.  e.,  the  great  needy  mass 
of  our  population,  and  to  which  is  due,  for  exam- 
ple, that  in  1906  the  cost  of  living  for  the  mass  of 
the  people  rose  by  no  less  than  from  10  to  15  per- 
cent, as  against  the  average  for  the  period  from 
1900  to  1904,  not  only  benefits  the  junkers  (that 
parasitic  class  so  tenderly  cared  for,  very  largely 
for  militaristic  reasons),  but  serves  in  the  first  line 
militaristic  purposes.  It  is  no  less  mainly  the 
fault  of  militarism  if  our  system  of  communica- 
tion, the  development  and  perfection  of  which  is 
especially  to  the  greatest  advantage  of  a  sensible 
capitalism  equipped  with  a  shrewd  understanding 
of  its  interests,  does  not  by  far  meet  the  demands 
of  traffic  and  technical  progress,  but  is  used  as  a 
milch-cow  for  a  special  indirect  taxation  of  the 
people.  The  story  of  the  Stengel  bill  on  imperial 
finances  ought  to  make  even  a  blind  man  see.  It 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  117 

is  possible  to  calculate  almost  to  a  cent  that  this 
bill  was  only  caused  by  the  necessity  of  stopping 
that  2oo-million  hole  which  militarism  had  once 
again  succeeded  in  making  in  the  imperial  treas- 
ury; and  the  kind  of  taxation  resorted  to,  which 
presses  heavily  on  articles  of  popular  consumption, 
beer,  tobacco,  etc.,  and  even  on  communication, 
that  breath  of  life  of  capitalism,  excellently  illus- 
trates what  was  said  above. 

No  doubt,  in  many  respects  militarism  is  a  bur- 
den to  capitalism  itself,  but  that  burden  is  as 
firmly  installed  on  the  capitalist  back  as  the  mys- 
terious strong  old  man  was  on  the  shoulders  of  Sin- 
bad  the  Sailor.  Capitalism  is  in  need  of  mili- 
tarism just  as  spies  are  needed  in  times  of  war  and 
executioners  and  their  assistants  in  times  of  peace. 
It  may  hate  militarism,  but  it  can  not  do  without 
it,  just  as  the  civilized  Christian  may  detest  the 
sins  against  the  Gospel,  but  can  not  live  without 
them.  Militarism  is  one  of  the  original  sins  of 
capitalism,  which  may  be  susceptible  of  being 
mitigated  here  and  there,  but  of  which  it  will  be 
purged  only  in  the  purgatory  of  Socialism. 


ii8  MILITARISM 

THE    ARMY    AS    A    WEAPON    AGAINST    THE 

PROLETARIAT    IN    THE    ECONOMIC 

STRUGGLE. 

Preliminary  Remarks. 

We  have  seen  that  militarism  has  become  the 
centre  round  which  our  political,  social  and  eco- 
nomic life  tends  to  move  more  and  more,  that  it  is 
the  wire-puller  operating  the  marionettes  of  the 
capitalist  puppet-show.  We  have  seen  what  the 
purpose  is  that  militarism  pursues,  how  it  tries  to 
accomplish  that  purpose  and  how  in  the  pursuit  of 
that  end  it  must  necessarily  produce  the  poison  by 
which  it  is  to  die.  We  have  also  pointed  out 
what  an  important  role  as  a  conservative  force  it 
plays — alas!  with  little  success — as  a  school  for 
drumming  proper  views  into  the  nation  in  uniform 
and  civilian  dress.  But  militarism  is  not  content 
with  that  part;  it  exercises  even  today  and  in  quiet 
times  its  conserving  influence  in  various  other 
directions,  as  a  preparation,  as  a  preliminary  prac- 
tice for  the  great  day  when  after  a  long  appren- 
ticeship and  service  as  a  journeyman  it  has  to  pro- 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  119 

duce  its  masterpiece,  for  the  day  when  the  people 
rises  boldly  and  fearlessly  against  its  rulers,  the 
day  of  the  great  reckoning. 

On  that  day,  which  the  elect  of  militarism  would 
see  dawn  rather  today  than  tomorrow  (because 
they  hope  that  the  sooner  it  comes  the  more  surely 
it  will  be  the  deluge  of  Social  Democracy)  mili- 
tarism will  shoot,  fire  grape-shot  and  massacre  en 
masse  to  its  heart's  content  "with  God,  for  King 
and  Fatherland."  The  22nd  of  January,  1905, 
the  bloody  May  week  of  1871  will  be  its  ideal  and 
model.  The  commander  of  the  Vienna  corps, 
Schonfeldt,  made  a  touching  vow  at  a  banquet  of 
feasting  bourgeois  in  April,  1894,  when  he  said: 
"I  can  assure  you  that  you,  too,  will  find  us  behind 
your  front  when  the  existence  of  society,  the  en- 
joyment of  the  hard  earned  property  are  endan- 
gered. When  the  citizen  stands  in  the  first  line 
the  soldier  flies  to  his  assistance." 

Thus  the  mailed  fist  is  ever  raised  and  ready  to 
come  down  with  a  crushing  blow.  Hypocritically 
they  speak  about  "the  maintenance  of  law  and 
order,"  "the  protection  of  the  liberty  to  work," 


120  MILITARISM 

and  mean  "the  maintenance  of  oppression,"  "the 
protection  of  exploitation."  Whenever  the  pro- 
letariat exhibits  an  inconvenient  animation  and 
power,  militarism  at  once  attempts  to  scare  it  back 
by  the  rattling  of  the  sabre,  that  militarism  which, 
ever  present  and  omnipotent,  is  behind  every  ac- 
tion the  forces  of  the  state  undertake  against  the 
forces  of  labor,  and  gives  to  such  action  the  ulti- 
mate, still  invincible  weight.  That  weight  is, 
however,  not  merely  reserved,  behind  the  vanguard 
of  the  police  and  constabulary,  for  important  oc- 
casions, but  is  also  constantly  available  for  the 
clearly  understood  purpose  of  aiding  in  the  every- 
day work  and  of  strengthening  in  a  sustained 
guerilla  warfare  the  pillars  of  the  capitalist  society. 
It  is  just  that  restlessly  and  craftily  employed  ver- 
satility that  characterizes  capitalist  militarism. 

SOLDIERS    AS    THE    COMPETITORS    OF    FREE 
WORKERS. 

As  a  functionary  of  capitalism  militarism  fully 
understands  that  its  greatest  and  most  sacred  task 
is  that  of  increasing  the  profits  of  the  employing 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  121 

class.  Thus  it  thinks  itself  authorized  and  even 
obliged  to  place  the  soldiers,  officially  or  semi-offi- 
cially,  as  beasts  of  burden  at  the  disposal  of  em- 
ployers, particularly  the  junkers,  who  use  the  sol- 
diers to  supply  that  want  of  farm  hands  which  has 
been  caused  by  the  inhuman  exploitation  and 
brutal  treatment  of  the  farm  laborers. 

To  send  soldiers  to  help  with  the  harvest  is  a 
practice  as  constantly  met  with  as  it  is  detrimental 
and  inimical  to  the  interests  of  labor.  It  reveals, 
like  the  system  of  soldier-servants,7  the  whole  mis- 
chievous and  stupid  humbug  behind  the  arguments 
which  are  used  by  those  monomaniacs  of  the  goose- 
step  and  the  parade  drill  to  show  the  purely  mili- 
tary necessity  of  a  long  period  of  military  service, 
and  awakens  not  very  flattering  reminiscences  of 
the  company  system  of  the  time  before  the  crash 
of  Jena.  More  complicated  are  the  numerous 
cases  in  which  the  post  office  and  the  railroad  man- 
agement temporarily  employ  soldiers  at  times  of 
heavy  traffic,  but  they  should  also  be  mentioned 
in  this  connection. 


7  The  practice  of  officers  of  engaging  private  soldiers  as 
domestics.    [TRANSLATOR.] 


122  MILITARISM 

THE    ARMY    AND    STRIKE-BREAKING. 

By  sending  soldiers  under  military  command  to 
act  as  strike-breakers  militarism  interferes  directly 
with  the  struggle  of  labor  to  emancipate  itself. 
We  need  only  point  to  the  case  of  the  present  com- 
mander of  the  Imperial  Anti-socialist  Union,  Lieu- 
tenant-General  v.  Liebert,  who  even  as  a  simple 
colonel  had  comprehended  in  1896  that  strikes  are 
a  calamity,  like  a  conflagration  or  inundation,  of 
course,  a  calamity  for  the  employers  whose  pro- 
tecting spirit  and  executive  officer  he  felt  himself 
to  be. 

As  regards  Germany,  a  special  notoriety  at- 
taches to  the  method  of  gently  pushing  the  men 
released  from  military  service  into  the  ranks  of  the 
strike-breakers,  a  method  practised  as  late  as  the 
summer  of  1906  during  the  Nuremberg  strike. 

Of  much  greater  importance  are  three  events 
that  occurred  outside  of  Germany.  In  the  first 
place  we  must  mention  the  military  strike-break- 
ing on  a  large  scale  that  took  place  during  the 
Dutch  general  railroad  strike  in  January,  1903, 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  123 

and  which  had  its  crowning  achievement  in  the 
law  withdrawing  from  the  railroad  workers  the 
right  to  organize.  In  the  second  place  we  refer  to 
the  military  strike-breaking  on  a  large  scale  during 
the  general  strike  of  the  Hungarian  railroad 
workers  in  1904,  on  which  occasion  the  military 
administration  went  farther  still  and  not  only 
commanded  the  men  in  active  military  service  to 
break  the  strike,  illegally  keeping  them  with  the 
colors  beyond  their  period  of  service,  but  had  the 
impudence  to  mobilize  the  railroad  workers  of  the 
first  and  second  reserves  and  such  other  men  of  the 
military  reserves  as  had  the  necessary  technical 
equipment,  and  force  them  into  strike-breaking  ser- 
vice on  the  railroad  under  military  discipline. 
Finally,  military  strike-breaking  on  a  large  scale 
was  resorted  to  during  the  Bulgarian  railroad  strike 
which  was  proclaimed  on  January  3,  1907.  Of 
no  less  importance  is  the  campaign  inaugurated  at 
the  beginning  of  the  month  of  December,  1906,  in 
Hungary  by  the  minister  for  agriculture  in  con- 
junction with  the  minister  of  war  against  the  right 
of  combination  and  the  strikes  of  agricultural 


124  MILITARISM 

laborers,  in  which  campaign  stress  was  laid  upon 
the  desirability  of  thoughtfully  training  soldiers  to 
serve  as  bands  of  strike-breakers  in  harvest-time. 

In  France,  too,  strike-breaking  by  soldiers  is 
well-known. 

The  fact  that  military  education  systematically 
fosters  strike-breaking  propensities  and  that  the 
workmen  released  from  the  active  army  become 
dangerous  to  the  struggling  proletariat,  on  account 
of  their  readiness  to  attack  the  members  of  their 
own  class  in  the  rear,  must  also  be  counted  among 
the  international  militaristic  achievements. 

THE    RULE    OF    THE    SABRE    AND    GUN    IN 
STRIKES. 

Preliminary  Remarks. 

Military  authorities  everywhere  have  always 
been  convinced  of  the  capitalist  truth  of  the  saying 
that  the  Hydra  of  revolution  is  lurking  behind 
every  strike.  The  army  is  therefore  always  ready 
to  put  to  flight  with  sabre  and  gun  the  disobedient 
slaves  of  the  capitalist  whenever  the  fists,  sabres 
and  pistols  of  the  police  are  riot  immediately  effec- 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  125 

tive  in  so-called  strike  riots.  That  is  true  in  re- 
gard to  all  the  capitalist  countries  and  also,  of 
course,  in  the  highest  degree  of  Russia,  which,  as  a 
whole,  is  not  yet  a  capitalist  country,  and  which 
can  not  be  considered  as  typical  in  this  respect  on 
account  of  special  political  and  cultural  conditions. 
Though  Italy  and  Austria  are  among  the  greatest 
sinners,  they  are  surpassed  by  the  states  enjoying  a 
republican  or  semi-republican  form  of  government. 
In  judging  historically  the  value  of  the  republican 
form  of  government  under  the  capitalist  economic 
system  it  is  of  the  greatest  importance  to  point  out 
persistently  that,  apart  from  England,  there  were 
no  countries  where  the  soldiery  was  so  willing  to 
suppress  strikes  for  the  benefit  of  the  employers 
and  behaved  so  bloodthirstily  and  recklessly  as  the 
republican  or  semi-republican  countries,  like  Bel- 
gium and  France,  with  which  the  freest  countries 
of  the  world,  Switzerland  and  America,  can  easily 
bear  comparison.  Russia  is,  of  course  in  this  re- 
spect, as  in  all  spheres  of  cruelty,  beyond  com- 
parison. Barbarism  and  worse  than  barbarism — 
the  savageness  of  the  beast  characterizes  the  gen- 


126  MILITARISM 

eral  civilization  of  her  ruling  classes  and  is  the 
natural  inclination  of  her  militarism,  which  has  lit- 
erally bathed  itself,  ever  since  the  first  timid  stir- 
rings of  the  proletariat,  in  the  blood  of  peaceful 
workmen  who  in  monstrous  misery  were  crying  for 
deliverance.  One  must  not  cite  any  particular 
event,  as  that  would  mean  tearing  in  a  petty  and 
arbitrary  spirit  a  link  out  of  an  endless  chain. 
For  every  drop  of  proletarian  blood  that  has  been 
shed  in  the  economic  struggle  in  all  the  other  coun- 
tries taken  together,  Czarism  has  crushed  a  prole- 
tarian body,  in  order  to  suppress  the  most  modest 
beginnings  of  a  labor  movement. 

An  employment  of  military  power  similar  in  its 
nature  we  observe  in  the  activities  of  the  colonial 
armies  and  constabularies  against  those  natives  of 
the  colonies  who  will  not  willingly  allow  them- 
selves to  be  brought  under  the  yoke  of  the  meanest 
exploitation  and  greed.  However,  we  can  not 
deal  more  fully  with  this  particular  subject. 

It  must  still  be  mentioned  that  often  no  sharp 
distinction  can  be  made  in  this  connection  between 
the  army  proper  and  the  constabulary  and  the 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  127 

police;  they  work  together  intimately,  they  re- 
place and  supplement  one  another  and  belong 
closely  together,  if  for  no  other  reason  than  that 
the  quality  which  counts  here — a  violent  com- 
bative temper,  a  willingness  and  readiness  to  sabre 
the  people  resolutely  and  ruthlessly,  is  also,  in  the 
case  of  the  police  and  constabulary,  mainly  a  gen- 
uine product  of  the  barracks,  a  fruit  of  military 
education  and  training. 

Italy. 

In  two  instructive  articles  (published  in  Mouve- 
ment  Socialiste,  May-June  and  August-Septem- 
ber, 1906,  Les  massacre  dc  class e  en  Italia}  Otta- 
vio  Dinale  gives  an  historical  account  of  massacres 
of  workmen  in  Italy.  He  does  not  merely  deal 
with  massacres  directly  connected  with  strikes,  but 
also  with  those  got  up  on  occasions  of  labor  demon- 
strations in  the  economic  struggle  outside  of 
strikes.  The  articles  show  clearly  how  quickly  the 
army  appears  on  the  scene  in  Italy  on  such  occa- 
sions, for  what  slight  cause  and  with  what  sur- 
passing severity  military  attacks  are  made  on  de- 


128  MILITARISM 

fenceless  crowds,  how  it  is  even  customary  to  con- 
tinue firing  into  and  slashing  at  the  fleeing,  dis- 
persed crowd.  He  sums  up  by  stating  that  in 
Italy  the  "bullets  of  the  King"  shatter  the  bones 
of  Italian  workmen  every  year  perhaps  some  five, 
six  or  even  ten  times.  He  points  out  that  the 
Italian  bourgeoisie,  the  author  of  those  massacres, 
is  among  the  most  narrow-minded,  backward  bour- 
geois classes  of  the  world,  that  in  the  eyes  of  these 
capitalists  Socialism  is  not  a  political  philosophy, 
but  a  species  of  criminal  disposition,  criminal  pro- 
pensity, the  most  dangerous  for  public  order.  He 
quotes  the  words  written  by  the  Milan  newspaper 
Idea  liberate  on  the  morrow  of  the  butchery  of 
Grammichele :  "Killed  and  wounded — those  peo- 
ple have  met  the  fate  they  deserve — the  grape- 
shot,  that  is  the  most  precious  element  of  civil- 
ization and  order" 

After  such  samples  one  need  not  be  astonished 
to  hear  that  even  a  so-called  democratic  govern- 
ment, like  that  of  Giolitti,  never  could  be  got  to 
call  the  military  to  account  for  their  bloodthirsty 
barbarities,  but  rather  praised  them  officially  "for 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  129 

having  done  their  duty."  It  appears  still  more 
natural  that  a  resolution  of  the  Socialist  party  in 
the  Italian  Chamber  demanding  restrictive  regula- 
tions in  regard  to  the  employment  of  the  military 
in  collective  conflicts  should  be  voted  down. 

The  first  effect  of  the  shootings  of  the  month  of 
May  of  1898  was  to  clear  the  situation  in  the 
class-struggle  and  make  even  the  blind  and  the 
short-sighted  optimists  see  how  matters  stood. 
The  following  is  a  nearly  complete  register  of  the 
bloodshed  of  recent  years : 

1901,  June  27,   Berra 2  killed,  10  wounded 

1902,  May  4,  Patugnano I        "  7        " 

1902,  August  5,  Cassano I  3 

1902,  Septembers,  Candela 5        "  II 

1902,  October  13  .Giarratana 2        "      12 

1903,  May  21,  Piere  3        "        i 

1903,  April  20,  Galatina  2        "        I 

1903,  August  31,  Torre  Annunziata 7  "      10 

1004,  May  17,  Cerignola 3  40 

1904,  September  4,  Buggera 3  "      10 

1904,  September  u,  Castelluzzo I  12 

1904,  September  15,  Sestri  Ponente  2        "        2 

1905,  April  18,  Foggia 7  20 

1905,  May  15,  St.  Elpidio 4  2 

1905,  August  16,  Grammichele  18  20 

1906,  March  23,  Muro 2  4 

1906,  March  21,  Scarano  i  9 

1906,  April  30,  Calinera   2  3 

1906,  April  4,  Turino I  6 

1906",  May  12,  Cagliari  2  "        7 


130  MILITARISM 

1906,  May  21,  Nebida i        "        i        " 

1906,  May  21,  Sonneza  6        "        6        " 

1906,  May  24,  Benventare  2        "        2        " 

The  total  number  is  23  butcheries  with  78  killed 
and  218  wounded.  A  good  harvest ! 

Innumerable  are  the  cases  in  Italy  where  the 
military  have  been  mobilized  against  workmen 
and  "peasants"  that  were  on  strike  or  were  demon- 
strating for  some  economic  reason  and  where  no 
blood  was  shed.  Those  "exercises"  of  the  army 
are  daily  news  items  on  the  other  side  of  the  Alps. 

We  may  also  mention  here  as  a  matter  of  course 
a  fact  attested  by  Herve,  viz.,  that,  just  as  it  is  in 
Italy,  it  is  impossible  to  keep  pace  with  the  butch- 
eries of  striking  workmen  and  peasants  in  Spain, 
a  country  in  whose  territories  once  upon  a  time  the 
sun  never  set  and  where  it  does  not  seem  ever  to 
rise  nowadays. 

A  ustria-Hungary. 

As  is  generally  known,  matters  are  not  much  bet- 
ter under  the  black  and  yellow  flag  of  the  Dual 
Monarchy.  The  Socialist  deputy  Daszynski 
could  justly  exclaim  in  the  Austrian  parliament  on 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  131 

September  25,  1903,  "During  strikes  and  popular 
demonstrations,  as  well  as  during  the  ebullitions  of 
national  feeling  it  is  always  the  army  which  turns 
its  bayonets  against  the  people,  against  the  work- 
men, against  the  peasants."  And  with  reference 
to  general  Austrian  politics  he  could  as  justly  point 
out,  "We  live  in  a  state  in  which,  even  in  times  of 
peace,  the  army  remains  the  only  thing  that  will 
cement  together  such  disparate  elements."  He 
could  point  to  the  incidents  that  took  place  at  Graz 
in  1897  and  the  blood  shed  at  Graslitz.  At  the 
downfall  of  Prime  Minister  Badeni,  in  the  month 
of  November,  1897,  the  military  were  employed 
in  Vienna,  Graz  and  Budapest  with  sanguinary  re- 
sults. We  remember  the  frequent  butcheries  of 
workmen  in  Galicia  (a  case  deserving  special  no- 
tice is  that  in  which  the  blood  of  farm  laborers 
was  shed  at  Burowicki  and  Ubinie  [Kanimko],  in 
1902),  the  bloody  events  at  Falkenau,  Niirschan 
and  Ostrau,  which  must  properly  be  credited  to  the 
constabulary,  a  special  body  which  is  particularly 
devoted  to  maintain  order  in  the  interior  and  is 
partly  subject  to  the  orders  of  the  military  au- 


132  MILITARISM 

thorities,  partly  to  those  of  the  civil  administrative 
authorities,  which  however  is  subject  to  a  purely 
military  discipline.  During  the  general  strike  at 
Trieste,  in  February,  1902,  there  were  also  clashes 
with  the  army,  and  ten  persons  were  either  killed 
or  wounded.  We  must  also  mention  the  incidents 
that  took  place  during  the  bricklayers'  strike  at 
Lemberg  in  1902,  and  the  political  demonstrations 

succeeding  that  strike,  when  hussars  rode  and  shot 
into  the  crowd,  killing  five  persons.  The  purely 

nationalistic  scuffle  at  Innsbruck  in  1905  is,  how- 
ever, outside  the  scope  of  our  subject. 

In  Hungary  considerable  military  excesses  di- 
rected against  the  populace  occurred  quite  fre- 
quently up  to  recent  years,  and  the  constabulary 
has  always  done  its  "full  duty" ;  as,  for  instance, 
during  the  riots  on  the  Pussta  Tamasie,  where  it 
fired  on  peaceful  farm  hands  without  any  reason 
whatever.  One  particular  event  of  most  recent 
date  should  be  remembered,  viz.,  the  battle  that 
was  fought  on  September  2,  1906,  in  the  county  of 
Hunyad,  where  the  military  were  on  the  rampage 
among  the  striking  miners  of  the  Petroseny 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  133 

coal  mines.  Numerous  persons  were  severely 
wounded,  two  mortally,  and  a  hundred  and  fifty 
were  slightly  wounded. 

On  a  later  occasion  we  shall  briefly  refer  to  the 
other  skirmishes  and  engagements  which  the  army 
has  fought  in  the  political  struggles  of  the  prole- 
tariat of  the  Habsburg  Dual  Monarchy. 

In  the  speech  mentioned  above,  Daszynski  de- 
manded that  the  "bayonets  should  not  mix  in  poli- 
tics" But  since  that  time,  as  every  one  knows, 
the  bayonets  have  turned  to  politics  more  eagerly 
and  actively  than  ever  before. 

Belgium. 

In  Belgium  the  butcheries  of  workmen  have 
a  long  history.  The  events  of  the  years  1867  and 
1868  are  of  importance,  if  only  on  account  of  the 
intercession  of  the  International.  The  butcheries 
begin  with  the  so-called  hunger  revolt  of  Mar- 
chienne  in  1867,  when  processions  of  defenceless 
demonstrating  workmen  were  set  upon  by  a  com- 
pany of  soldiers  and  cut  down.  There  followed, 
in  the  month  of  March,  1868,  the  massacre  of 


134  MILITARISM 

Charleroi  and,  in  1869,  the  infamous  butcheries  of 
Seraing  and  the  Borinage. 

The  massacre  of  Charleroi,  arranged  by  the  mili- 
tary and  constabulary  against  the  miners  who  had 
been  driven  to  the  utmost  desperation  in  conse- 
quence of  the  restriction  of  output  and  wage  reduc- 
tions, induced  the  International  at  the  time  to  be- 
gin a  vigorous  agitation  in  Belgium,  and  led  to  a 
proclamation  by  the  General  Council  of  the  In- 
ternational, which  resulted  in  a  considerable  suc- 
cess for  the  International  as  regards  organization. 

The  scenes  of  the  sixties  were  repeated  during 
the  so-called  hunger  rebellions  of  1886  in  which 
not  only  economic  questions,  but  also  the  demand 
for  universal  suffrage  played  a  part,  the  latter  in  a 
confused  manner,  it  is  true.  General  Baron  Van- 
dersmissen  issued  his  notorious  circular  letter  on 
April  3,  1886,  a  circular  later  condemned  by  even 
the  Chamber  of  Deputies,  in  which  he  decreed 
cynically,  "L'usage  des  armes  est  fait  sans  aucune 
sommation"  [use  is  made  of  arms  without  previous 
warning].  There  was  an  unheard-of  number  of 
victims.  In  Roux  alone  16  workmen  were  killed 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  135 

by  a  volley.  On  all  this  class-justice  set  its  stamp 
of  approval  and  laid  particular  emphasis  by 
numerous  heavy  sentences  which  were  imposed 
on  workmen.  From  1886  to  1902  there  was 
scarcely  a  strike  in  Belgium  without  the  military 
interfering.  In  that  period  some  80  men  were 
killed.  During  the  general  strike  of  1893,  which 
though  of  a  political  nature  may  be  mentioned  in 
this  connection,  numerous  people  were  left  dead 
on  the  field  of  battle.  The  names  of  Verviers, 
Roux,  La  Louviere,  Jemappes,  Ostende,  Berger- 
hout,  Mons  have  been  burnt  as  with  a  red-hot  iron 
into  the  memory  of  the  class-conscious  Belgian 
working-class.  They  are  blood-stained  leaves  in 
the  big  book  registering  the  sins  of  Belgian  capi- 
talism. It  was  in  1902  that  the  standing  army, 
together  with  the  reserves,  was  mobilized  for  strike 
purposes  for  the  last  time,  that  time  in  consequence 
of  the  general  strike.  The  unfavorable  reports 
about  the  disposition  and  sentiments  of  the  sol- 
diers that  reached  the  cabinet  and  were  soon  veri- 
fied by  the  fact  that  the  soldiers  began  to  show 
their  revolutionary  temper  in  a  fairly  open  man- 


136  MILITARISM 

ner,  sang  the  Marseillaise,  hissed  their  officers,  etc., 
led  to  the  Flemish  soldiers  being  sent  to  the  Wal- 
loon districts  and  vice  versa,  and  finally  brought 
about  the  decision  not  to  use  the  standing  army  at 
all.  Since  1902  the  proletarian  soldiers  of  Bel- 
gium have  ceded  the  honorable  role  of  acting  the 
watch-dog  to  capitalism,  the  part  of  a  "flying  sen- 
try before  the  money-chest  of  the  employers,"  at 
least  as  far  as  the  interior  militarism  is  concerned, 
to  the  constabulary  and  civic  guard,  as  previously 
set  forth.  To  protect  their  sacred  exploiting  priv- 
ileges the  bourgeoisie  were  now  at  all  events 
obliged  to  exert  themselves  and  risk  their  own 
skins — if  such  a  danger  can  be  said  to  exist  at  all 
in  face  of  unarmed  crowds.  Elsewhere  we  have 
described  that  the  civic  guard  does  excellent  work 
in  the  fight  against  the  interior  enemy. 

France. 

In  France  the  history  of  the  class-struggle  has 
been  written  with  rivers  of  blood.  We  will  not 
conjure  up  the  hecatombs  of  the  three  days'  battle 
of  July,  1830;  nor  the  10,000  that  died  in  the 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  137 

street  fighting  from  June  23  to  26,  1848,  the  vic- 
tims of  the  executioner  Cavaignac;  nor  the  first  of 
December,  1851,  of  Napoleon  the  "Little";  nor 
the  sea  of  blood  made  with  those  28,000  heroes,  in 
which  the  French  bourgeoisie,  murdering  in  a 
wholesale  fashion  as  the  agent  and  avenger  of  a 
capitalism  that  was  shrieking  with  rage,  tried  in 
the  red  week  of  May  of  1871  to  drown  the  Com- 
mune, that  capitalist  slave  war;  nor  the  Pere- 
Lachaise  cemetery  and  its  wall  of  the  Federals, 
the  monuments  of  an  incomparable  heroism. 
These  struggles,  revolutionary  in  the  highest  de- 
gree, in  which  militarism  did  its  fearful  work,  are 
outside  the  scope  of  our  historical  speculations. 

The  exploits  of  French  militarism  against  de- 
fenceless striking  workmen  begin  at  an  early  date. 
The  so-called  "rebellion"  of  the  silk  weavers  of 
Lyons,  whose  banner  bore  the  famous  and  moving 
words,  "vivre  en  travaillant  ou  mourir  en  com- 
bat tant"  [to  live  working  or  to  die  fighting],  be- 
gan in  the  month  of  November,  1831,  by  the  mili- 
tary firing  on  a  peaceful  demonstration;  in  a  fight 
lasting  two  days  the  indignant  workmen  con- 


138  MILITARISM 

quered  the  town,  the  national  guard  fraternizing 
with  them;  but  soon  the  military  occupied  the 
town  without  a  blow.  Ricamari,  Saint-Aubin 
and  Decazeville  are  names  of  localities  rendered 
famous  by  the  first  exploits  of  militarism  under  the 
second  French  Empire.  In  those  times  the  bour- 
geois republicans  were  most  vehemently  opposed 
to  sending  soldiers  to  the  strike  districts.  These 
same  republicans  had  scarcely  got  into  power  when 
they  themselves  began  to  adopt  the  method  of 
Bonapartism  which  they  had  only  just  fought 
against,  and  they  soon  excelled  their  model. 
They  found  words  of  disapproval  only  when  the 
culprit  was  a  Clerical  or  a  Monarchist,  and  then 
only  out  of  political  spite.  At  Fourmies  a  bullet 
from  a  Lebel  rifle,  striking  down  a  young  girl, 
Marie  Blondeau,  on  May  1,  1891,  inaugurated  the 
new  regime's  baptism  of  blood.  The  bag  of  the 
day,  which  was  made  by  the  145th  regiment  of 
the  line,  consisted  of  10  killed  and  35  wounded. 
But  the  butchers  of  Fourmies,  Constant  and  his 
assistant,  Captain  Chapuis,  were  soon  to  have  com- 
panions. Fourmies  was  followed  by  Chalons  in 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  139 

1899,  La  Martinique  in  1900,  then  Longwy,  where 
the  officers  sealed  and  celebrated  the  Franco-Rus- 
sian alliance  by  using  Russian  knouts;  finally,  in 
the  months  of  May  and  June,  1905,  there  were 
the  events  of  Villefranche-sur-Saone  and  particu- 
larly Limoges  with  the  cavalry  charges  and  shoot- 
ings of  April  17,  1905.  In  December,  1905,  the 
drama  of  Combree  was  enacted,  and  on  January 
20,  1907,  the  people  demonstrating  in  favor  of 
Sunday  as  a  day  of  rest  were  chased  off  the  streets 
of  Paris  by  an  immense  muster  of  troops.  In  this 
recital  we  must  also  not  forget  Dunkirk,  Creuset 
and  Montceau-les-Mines  where,  according  to  the 
report  made  by  the  Confederation  Generate  du 
Travail  (the  French  Federation  of  Labor)  to  the 
Dublin  international  conference,  the  soldiers  de- 
clared their  solidarity  with  the  strikers. 

What  Meslier  exclaimed  during  the  latest  great 
anti-militaristic  trial  is  true:  "Since  the  murder 
of  little  Marie  Blondeau  at  Fourmies  the  working- 
class  of  France  has  passed  through  a  long  martyr- 
dom abounding  in  victims."  Nothing  shows  bet- 
ter the  absurdity  of  the  illusion  of  a  peaceful 


140  MILITARISM 

development  cherished  by  the  adherents  of  the 
"new  method,"  than  the  fact  that  the  vigorous 
growth  and  increase  of  anti-clerical  and  republican 
sentiment  and  activities  which  could  be  noticed 
in  the  France  of  the  last  five  years,  the  France  of 
Millerandism,  has  not  resulted  in  a  diminution, 
but  positively  in  an  increase  of  the  "punitive  ex- 
peditions" of  the  military  against  strikers.  The 
latest  radical  democratic  government  of  Clemen- 
ceau  with  its  two  Socialists  will  also  not  bring 
about  a  change.  Lafargues's  pointed  remark  in 
the  Humanite,  "The  modern  armies  serve  exclu- 
sively for  the  protection  of  capitalist  property,  in 
so  far  as  they  do  not  concern  themselves  with  plun- 
dering colonies,"  hits  the  nail  on  the  head  in  re- 
gard to  France  also. 

United  States  of  America. 
It  is  easy  to  show  what  that  "tone  of  equality" 
signifies  which,  according  to  Professor  Sombart, 
pervades  in  many  respects  the  social  and  public 
life  of  the  United  States,  and  to  demonstrate  that 
capitalism,  when  it  comes  to  the  point,  can  very 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  141 

effectively  reinforce  its  "tone"  by  the  sound  of 
the  cannon,  the  rattling  of  musketry  and  the  swish- 
ing of  the  sabre,  an  accomplishment  in  which  it 
still  outstrips  even  the  proletariat  of  America. 
The  following  facts  are  not  only  instructive  in 
regard  to  the  great  importance  which  the  methods 
of  military  recruiting  and  the  disposition  and 
training  of  troops  have  for  their  availability 
against  the  "interior"  enemy.  They  often  assume 
a  peculiar  character  in  consequence  of  the  com- 
paratively well-armed  condition  of  the  working- 
class,  attributable  to  circumstances  peculiar  to 
America. 

Beyond  the  ocean,  as  in  Belgium,  the  period  of 
the  butchery  of  workingmen  begins  with  the  move- 
ment of  the  unemployed.  On  January  13,  1874, 
a  strong  police  force  pounced  upon  an  unemployed 
demonstration  without  any  provocation.  Hun- 
dreds of  severely  wounded  workmen  remained  on 
the  battle-field  of  Tompkins  Square,  New  York. 

Then  followed  the  dramatic  events  of  the  rail- 
road strike  in  the  month  of  July,  1877.  Against 
the  strikers  of  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  Railroad 


142  MILITARISM 

the  governor  of  West  Virginia  sent  several  com- 
panies of  state  militia  which  proved  too  weak 
however.  The  250  men  of  the  Federal  army  sent 
to  their  aid  by  President  Hayes  achieved  no 
better  result.  In  Maryland  the  rifles  of  the 
militia  killed  ten  and  wounded  a  greater  num- 
ber of  men.  In  Pittsburgh  the  local  militia, 
called  upon  by  the  sheriff,  refused  to  act. 
The  old  trick  of  employing  men  from  other 
parts  of  the  country  was  resorted  to.  Six 
hundred  men  of  the  militia  sent  from  Phila- 
delphia fought  a  short  but  fierce  battle  with  the 
strikers,  but  were  beaten  and  fled  the  next  morn- 
ing. The  militia  called  out  against  the  strikers 
in  Reading,  Pennsylvania  consisted  mostly  of 
workmen  who  fraternized  with  the  strikers,  dis- 
tributed their  ammunition  among  them  and  threat- 
ened to  turn  their  arms  against  all  hostile  militia 
units.  But  one  company,  which  was  almost  ex- 
clusively composed  of  men  belonging  to  the  pos- 
sessing classes  and  was  led  by  a  reckless  officer, 
opened  fire  on  the  crowd,  killing  13  and  wound- 
ing 22  persons.  The  company  was,  however, 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  143 

given  no  time  to  enjoy  its  exploit,  and  had  to  re- 
tire soon  in  a  badly  beaten-up  condition.  St. 
Louis,  which  for  a  time  was  entirely  in  the  hands 
of  the  strikers,  was  finally  re-conquered  for  "law 
and  order"  by  the  entire  police  force  and  several 
companies  of  the  militia,  after  a  veritable  siege  of 
the  headquarters  of  the  executive  committee.8 

The  terror  which  overtook  Chicago  in  the  month 
of  May,  1886,  is  attributable  to  the  Pinkertons 
and  the  police  force.  Mr.  McCormick,  of  the  Mc- 
Cormick  Reaper  Works,  let  his  armed  Pinkertons 
loose  upon  the  strikers  (to  protect  the  "willing 
workers,"  as  was  alleged),  and  thus  started  off 
the  sanguinary  attacks  by  the  police,  who  clubbed 
men,  women  and  children  without  distinction, 
killed  six  persons  and  wounded  numerous  others. 
That  occurred  on  May  3.  On  the  4th  of  May  the 
celebrated  dynamite  bomb  affair  occurred,  which 
produced  a  violent  street  battle  in  which  4  work- 
men were  killed  and  about  50  wounded,  whilst 
of  the  police  7  were  killed  and  60  wounded.  The 

8  See  Hillquit's  History  of  Socialism  in  the  United  States, 
which  has  been  mostly  used  for  the  part  referring  to  the  United 
States. 


144  MILITARISM 

whole  world  is  acquainted  with  the  horrible  trial 
arising  out  of  the  events  of  May  4,  1886,  a  trial 
in  which  the  democratic  class-justice  of  America 
gave  a  splendid  proof  of  its  qualifications. 

The  events  during  the  period  from  1892  to 
1894  deserve  a  more  detailed  treatment.  In  the 
first  place,  violent  fights  took  place  in  the  month 
of  July,  1892,  during  the  strike  in  Carnegie's  iron 
and  steel  works  at  Homestead  between  the  armed 
Pinkertons,  called  in  by  the  employer;  12  men 
were  killed  and  20  severely  wounded,  the  Pinker- 
tons  were  beaten,  and  finally  Federal  troops 
brought  about  the  defeat  of  the  strikers  by  occu- 
pying the  town,  and  with  the  help  of  military  law. 
Almost  at  the  same  time  a  miners'  strike  broke  out 
in  Cceur  d'Alene,  Idaho.  Here  the  militia,  which 
was  only  some  100  strong,  was  not  in  a  position 
to  interfere  in  the  fight  between  the  strike-breakers 
and  the  strikers,  who  were  well  armed.  It  was 
only  when  Federal  troops,  asked  for  by  the  gov- 
ernor, arrived  that  the  strikers  were  routed. 

In  Buffalo  the  switchmen  went  on  strike  in  the 
month  of  August,  1892.  The  local  militia,  called 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  145 

out  immediately  at  the  beginning  of  the  strike, 
did  not  appear  to  be  inclined  to  prevent  picketing. 
Finally  the  sheriff  was  asked  to  request  the  gov- 
ernor to  send  troops,  whereupon  the  entire  militia 
of  the  state,  twenty  times  more  numerous  than  the 
strikers,  appeared  on  the  scene  within  forty-eight 
hours  and  restored  "peace  and  quiet." 

In  the  same  month  the  strikes  at  the  iron  mines 
of  Inman  and  at  the  coal  mines  of  Oliver  Springs 
and  Coal  Creek  caused  the  governor  of  Tennes- 
see to  concentrate  the  whole  available  force 
of  the  state  militia,  after  some  portions  of  the 
militia  had  been  disarmed  by  the  strikers  and  sent 
home  again.  Here,  too,  the  suppression  of  the 
strike  was  followed  by  the  merciless  work  of  class- 
justice. 

Finally  we  must  make  mention  of  the  Pullman 
strike  of  1894,  when  the  President  of  the  United 
States,  not  heeding  the  protest  of  Mr.  Altgeld, 
the  governor  of  Illinois,  despatched  Federal  troops 
who  broke  the  strike  in  conjunction  with  the  state 
militia;  12  men  were  killed.  As  in  all  the  other 
preceding  cases  the  courts,  it  is  true,  worked  jointly 


146  MILITARISM 

with  militarism  and  contributed  so  much  to  the 
defeat  of  the  workmen  by  means  of  the  famous 
injunctions  and  wholesale  imprisonments  that  the 
leader  of  the  strike,  Debs,  attested:  "Not  the 
railroads,  not  the  army  defeated  us,  but  the  power 
of  the  courts  of  the  United  States." 

It  still  remains  true  that,  though  the  militia 
failed  frequently  and  though  the  strikers  were  fre- 
quently armed,  it  was  the  military  power  that  de- 
cided the  defeats  of  the  workers  in  all  the  cases 
mentioned;  and  subsequently,  too,  the  strikers  in 
America  "were  in  a  majority  of  cases  quelled  by 
the  aid  of  the  local  police,  state  militia  or 
Federal  troops,"  also  aided,  to  be  sure,  by  "gov- 
ernment by  injunction."  Almost  without  an  ex- 
ception the  strikes  ended  thus  with  the  defeat  of 
the  workmen,  according  to  Hillquit,  who  seems 
to  be  somewhat  too  pessimistic  in  this  connection. 

Canada. 

Canada's  "free"  soil  was  reddened  by  the  blood 
of  workmen  at  Hamilton  on  November  24,  1906. 
During  a  collision  with  striking  railroadmen  the 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  147 

militia  wounded  50  persons,  some  of  them  se- 
verely. 

Switzerland. 

Switzerland's  record  in  this  field  of  military  ac- 
tivity is  truly  quite  a  long  one.  As  early  as  1869 
the  government  of  Geneva  employed  both  the  po- 
lice force  and  the  militia  against  striking  work- 
men. In  the  same  year  the  government  of  the 
canton  of  Vaud  recalled  by  telegraph  a  battalion 
that  had  marched  off  to  do  military  exercises,  sup- 
plied it  with  ball-cartridges  and  had  it  march  with 
fixed  bayonets  into  the  town,  where  the  workmen 
were  on  strike.  It  was  also  in  1869  that  the 
government  of  Basle  made  troops  act  as  pickets 
against  the  workers  when  the  women  silk  weavers 
struck  to  improve  their  miserable  conditions;  and 
when  in  the  same  year  a  strike  of  vase-makers  and 
engravers  broke  out  at  La  Chaux  de  Fonds,  the 
new  bourgeois  government  provided  itself  with 
arms  and  ammunition  for  a  possible  mobilization 
of  the  militia. 

In  1875  blood  was  shed.  The  government  of 
the  canton  of  Uri  mobilized  the  militia  against 


148  MILITARISM 

2,000  striking  workmen  employed  at  the  construc- 
tion of  the  St.  Gothard  tunnel,  who  were  chiefly 
up  in  arms  against  the  shameful  truck  system;  it 
is  said  that  the  employers  interested  placed  20,000 
francs  at  the  disposal  of  the  government  for  that 
mobilization.  As  a  result  of  the  bold  attack  sev- 
eral people  were  killed  and  some  15  remained 
wounded  on  the  battle-field  of  the  class-struggle. 
Blood  was  also  shed  in  1901  by  two  companies 
called  out  against  the  strikers  of  the  Simplon  tun- 
nel by  the  government  of  the  canton  of  Valais. 
Some  workmen  were  severely  wounded  on  that 
occasion.  In  the  same  year  two  companies  of  the 
militia  had  to  do  duty  as  pickets  against  striking 
Italian  bricklayers  in  the  canton  of  Tessino.  In 
the  month  of  October,  1902,  occurred  the  well- 
known  affair  of  Geneva  where,  during  a  strike 
directed  against  an  American  band  of  exploiters, 
the  workmen  were  chased  and  clubbed  by  order  of 
the  government  of  Geneva.  Militiamen  who  re- 
fused at  the  time  to  act  as  bum-bailiffs  were  im- 
prisoned and  declared  to  have  forfeited  their  civic 
rights.  Incidentally  it  may  be  mentioned  that  on 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  149 

that  occasion  even  many  of  the  bourgeois  that  had 
not  been  called  out  armed  themselves  against  the 
workers.  At  about  the  same  time  the  militia  was 
mobilized  at  Basle  for  a  strike.  In  1904  the  em- 
ployers of  the  building  trade  at  Chaux  de  Fonds 
called  upon  the  government  for  military  help 
against  a  strike  which  to  their  disgust  was  per- 
fectly orderly  in  spite  of  all  provocations  and 
therefore  hopeless  from  the  employers'  point  of 
view;  as  a  result,  cavalry  and  a  battalion  of  in- 
fantry appeared  promptly  on  the  scene  and,  by 
intimidating  the  proletarians  who  were  conducting 
a  legal  fight,  forced  them  back  into  capitalist  slav- 
ery. It  was  also  in  1904  that  the  military  was 
called  out  against  strikers  at  the  Ricken,  in  the 
canton  of  St.  Gall,  to  protect,  as  was  alleged,  the 
fruit  and  vegetable  harvest  which  was  in  no  way 
endangered.  St.  Gall  also  sent  its  militia  to 
Rohrschach,  where,  during  a  disagreement  about 
wages  in  the  foundries  owned  by  French  capital- 
ists, an  excited  crowd  had  smashed  a  few  window- 
panes.  A  very  serious  affair  took  place  at  Zurich 
in  the  summer  of  1906.  In  consequence  of  the 


150  MILITARISM 

great  increase  in  the  prices  of  all  necessaries  of 
life  several  strikes  for  higher  wages  had  broken 
out  in  that  city,  when  the  workmen  employed  in 
the  building  trades  likewise  proclaimed  a  strike 
for  the  same  reason.  The  militia  interfered  with- 
out the  slightest  cause  with  sanguinary  results, 
and  beat  and  clubbed  the  striking  workmen  in  the 
most  brutal  fashion,  dragging  especially  the  for- 
eign strikers  off  to  the  barracks  where  they  were 
struck  with  riding-whips  under  the  direction  of 
the  officers.  Moreover,  picketing  was  prohibited 
as  well  as  every  kind  of  demonstration.  The  in- 
terpellation relating  to  those  infamous  events 
which  was  presented  in  the  Grand  Council  was  at 
first  laid  on  the  shelf  and  finally  simply  throttled 
without  any  discussion  by  the  solid  bourgeois  ma- 
jority. And  to  cap  it  all,  six  of  the  strike  leaders 
were  put  on  trial  and,  on  August  24,  1906,  Sigg 
was  sentenced  to  be  imprisoned  for  eight  months 
and  to  forfeit  his  active  civic  rights  for  one  year, 
for  an  alleged  incitement  to  mutiny  by  means  of 
an  anti-militarist  leaflet  addressed  to  the  militia; 
the  other  five  were  acquitted. 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  151 

More  can  hardly  be  expected  from  a  bourgeois 
republic  and  a  militia. 

These  things  appear  in  their  proper  significance 
in  connection  with  the  fact  mentioned  elsewhere — 
that  the  Swiss  citizens  not  in  active  military  serv- 
ice had  their  ammunition  taken  out  of  their  cus- 
tody in  1899.  It  will  be  seen  that  this  hap- 
pened just  early  enough  to  facilitate,  in  view  of 
the  intensified  form  of  the  class-struggle,  the  em- 
ployment of  the  militia  in  the  interests  of  the  cap- 
italists. 

On  December  21,  1906,  the  National  Council 
had  adopted,  by  a  majority  of  65  against  55,  a 
clause  of  the  law  on  military  re-organization  pro- 
viding that,  if  conflicts  of  an  economic  nature 
"should  endanger  or  disturb  internal  peace,"  the 
calling-out  of  troops  "necessitated  thereby"  shall 
be  resorted  to  solely  for  the  purpose  of  "maintain- 
ing public  order"  The  whole  law  was  adopted 
by  105  votes  against  4.  Undoubtedly  the  provi- 
sion referred  to  does  not  mean  anything  but  what 
was  hitherto  the  rule  of  conduct  followed  when 
the  military  was  called  out;  it  is  thus  worthless, 


152  MILITARISM 

doubly  worthless,  nay,  positively  suspicious  in 
view  of  the  great  minority  who  declared  them- 
selves even  against  that  clause. 

'Norway. 

Norway,  the  free  country  that  went  through  the 
most  agreeable  revolution  in  the  world's  history 
in  the  summer  of  1905  and  then  proceeded  to  in- 
dulge in  a  monarchical  head  for  her  state  out  of 
pure  love  of  pleasure,  follows  entirely  the  devel- 
opment of  the  capitalistic  countries  in  spite  of  all 
the  rustic  romanticism  still  clinging  to  her.  The 
employment  of  military  force  against  striking 
workmen  is  also  no  rare  occurrence  in  that  coun- 
try of  the  peasant  democracy.  In  an  article  that 
appeared  in  the  Tyvende  Aarhundrede  on  May  i, 
1903,  a  report  is  made  on  the  subject.  We  learn 
that  in  1902  alone  two  cases  of  the  kind  occurred, 
one  in  Dunderlands  Dalen  and  the  other  in 
Tromso. 

Germany. 

There  remains  to  be  considered  Germany.  It 
is  just  in  Germany  where  the  employment  of  the 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  153 

military  in  economic  conflicts  is  not  customary. 
Scarcely  any  cases  in  which  the  army  interfered 
actively  can  be  reported,  if  we  except  the  weaver- 
riots  of  1847,  when  the  Prussian  infantry  killed 
1 1  and  wounded  24  of  those  wretched,  atrociously 
tortured  proletarians  and  class-justice  finished  the 
soldiers'  work  by  sending  a  great  number  of  people 
to  the  penitentiary,  and  if  we  further  except  the 
miners'  strike  of  1889,  when  the  troops  called  for 
by  Provincial  President  von  Hagemeister,  on  May 
10,  killed  3  and  wounded  4  persons  at  the  Moltke 
mine  and  killed  2  and  wounded  5  in  Bochum. 
During  the  riots  of  the  Berlin  unemployed,  Feb- 
ruary, 1892,  the  military  did  not  go  into  action, 
but  it  has  been  asserted  on  good  authority  that  the 
Berlin  military  were  consigned  as  early  as  January 
18,  1894,  on  tne  mere  rumor  that  the  unemployed 
planned  a  demonstration  before  the  palace  in  Ber- 
lin. 

However,  that  military  "moderation"  does  not 
find  an  explanation,  as  might  be  supposed,  in  a 
particularly  mild  and  just  disposition  of  the  men 
at  the  helm  of  German  affairs.  The  contrary  is 


154  MILITARISM 

true  of  them.  Germany  possesses  a  strong  police 
and  constabulary  force,  excellently  organized  for 
rendering  service  to  the  capitalists.  It  is  not  for 
nothing  that  Germany  enjoys  the  reputation  of 
being  the  police  state  par  excellence.  Police  and 
constabulary,  both  armed  with  deadly  weapons, 
fulfil  entirely  the  functions  which  elsewhere  are 
allotted  rather  to  the  military,  and  in  face  of  the 
greatly  varying  momentary  requirements  they 
prove  themselves  more  handy  and  adaptable  than 
the  more  clumsy  and  cumbrously  working  ma- 
chinery of  the  army.  The  number  of  sanguinary 
conflicts  between  strikers  and  the  police  or  con- 
stabulary is  quite  large  in  Germany.  The  strike 
of  the  Berlin  street  railroadmen  in  1900  and  the 
so-called  Breslau  riots  of  1906  are  by  no  means 
exceptions.  Biewald's  9  hacked-off  hand  is  only 
an  exceptionally  provoking  piece  of  evidence  for 
the  blindly  furious  recklessness  of  our  police,  that 
recklessness  which  is  a  fruit  of  military  training. 
That  hand  is  in  goodly  company  alongside  of  split 

9  The  name  of  an  inoffensive  workman  who  had  one  of  his 
hands  hacked  off  by  an  infuriated  custodian  of  law  and  order 
whose  identity  was  never  disclosed.  [TRANSLATOR.] 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  155 

heads,  amputated  ears,  noses,  fingers  and  other 
parts  of  the  body,  and  that  collection  is  increasing 
rapidly.  Altogether  the  number  of  cases  in  which 
blood  is  shed  by  the  armed  forces  of  the  govern- 
ment during  strikes  can  hardly  be  much  lower  in 
Germany  than  in  other  countries.  To  be  sure  it 
is  quite  impossible  to  estimate  them  even  approxi- 
mately as,  unfortunately,  the  cases  of  people  hurt 
by  the  police  during  strikes  are  not  adequately 
registered  and  inefficiently  heeded.  But  if  the 
number  of  those  victims  should  be  smaller  in  Ger- 
many than  elsewhere  this  is  not  to  be  credited  to 
the  good,  humane  intentions  of  the  employers,  of 
the  capitalist  state.  That  is  proved  most  conclu- 
sively by  the  fact  that  in  Germany,  too,  military 
consignations  and  the  holding  ready  of  troops  are 
almost  uniformly  resorted  to  during  great  strikes. 
The  gravest  case  in  point  was  furnished  by  the 
great  strike  of  the  Westphalian  miners  which 
lasted  from  January  8  to  February  10,  1C)O5.10 

10  The  foot-note,  continued  on  page  156,  refers  to  the  first 
great  modern  strike  of  the  Westphalian  miners,  in  1889,  when 
the  men,  who  had  great  faith  in  the  then  very  young  Emperor, 
sent  a  deputation  to  Berlin  to  ask  for  his  help.  [TRANSLA- 
TOR.] 


156  MILITARISM 

The  successful  prevention  of  greater  bloodshed 
should  rather  be  exclusively  ascribed  to  the  sober- 
mindedness,  moderation  and  strict  self-discipline, 
to  the  training  and  the  enlightened  state  of  mind 
of  the  German  working-class.  And  we  should  not 
doubt  that  the  Prussian  and  Saxon  governments, 
for  instance,  would  not  think  twice  before  coming 
to  the  assistance  of  capitalism  in  the  economic  con- 
flict or  a  suitable  occasion  with  rifles,  sabres  and 
guns  and  all  the  paraphernalia  of  militarism. 

VETERANS'  ASSOCIATIONS  AND  STRIKES. 

Considering  that  militarism  takes  pains  by 
means  of  veterans'  associations  to  keep  up  the 
militaristic  sentiments  of  the  men  even  after  they 
have  passed  out  of  active  military  service  and  to 
propagate  such  sentiments,  it  must  appear  almost 


On  May  19,  1889,  the  German  Emperor  explained  to  the  dep- 
utation the  miners  had  sent  to  him:  "If  I  should  notice  that 
Social-Democratic  tendencies  get  mixed  up  with  the  move- 
ment and  men  are  incited  to  illegal  resistance  I  shall  interfere 
with  merciless  rigor  and  employ  the  power — and  it  is  a  large 
one — which  belongs  to  me."  According  to  the  Freisinnige 
Zeitung  he  also  expressed  himself  thus:  If  the  least  resist- 
ance were  offered  to  the  authorities  he  would  have  everybody 
shot  down. 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  157 

as  a  matter  of  course  that  the  veterans'  associa- 
tions also  interfere  in  strikes.  To  be  sure,  they 
are  not  able  to  take  an  active  part  in  the  violent 
suppression  of  the  economic  struggles  of  labor,  but 
they  may  yet  be  called  predestined  strike-breaking 
organizations.  In  certain  places  at  least  one 
would  very  much  like  to  employ  them  for  that 
purpose.  But  the  full  exploitation  of  the  veter- 
ans' associations  for  that  purpose  is  impeded  by 
the  following  facts  and  considerations :  that  these 
clubs  contain,  in  spite  of  all  the  precautions  taken, 
a  considerable  percentage  of  oppositional  and  even 
Social  Democratic  elements;  that  it  is  in  conflicts 
between  capital  and  labor  sooner  than  in  other 
cases  that  even  the  most  lamb-like  workmen,  men 
who  are  least  intelligent  in  regard  to  social  ques- 
tions find  themselves  getting  angry  and  have  an 
appreciation  of  the  class-struggle  and  the  position 
of  their  own  class  drummed  into  them;  and  that 
too  reckless  an  anti-labor  policy  fails  in  its  pur- 
pose and  rouses  even  the  Catholic  and  Liberal 
labor  organizations.  At  any  rate,  the  discussion 
about  this  subject  which  took  place  in  July,  1906, 


158  MILITARISM 

at  Ostheim,  at  the  convention  of  the  Grandducal 
Saxon  Veterans'  and  Military  Association  of  Saxe- 
Weimar,  is  of  the  greatest  interest.  The  discus- 
sion arose  in  connection  with  a  principle  adopted 
by  the  convention,  according  to  which  every  mem- 
ber of  the  association  is  in  duty  bound  to  urge  the 
expulsion  of  such  members  as  are  shown  to  be  ad- 
herents of  parties  hostile  to  the  government,  espe- 
cially of  the  Social  Democratic  party.  The  re- 
sult was  that  not  all  strikes,  but  all  those  strikes 
which  run  counter  to  the  members'  duty  of  "fidel- 
ity to  Emperor,  Prince  and  Fatherland"  are  con- 
sidered as  actions  betraying  sentiments  hostile  to 
the  government  and  revolutionary  sentiments. 
Since  it  will  depend  upon  the  eminent  gentlemen 
who  as  a  matter  of  course  play  the  first  fiddle  in 
the  veterans'  associations,  to  declare  where  and 
when  said  fidelity  is  called  in  question  by  a  strike, 
and  since  those  gentlemen,  like  our  police  and 
courts,  are  only  too  much  accustomed  to  consider 
strikes  (which  only  too  often  touch  their  own 
vital  interests,  directly  or  indirectly)  as  Social 
Democratic  machinations,  we  can  count  upon  a 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  159 

profitable  activity  of  the  veterans'  associations  in 
that  field  of  labor.  But  it  will  be  profitable  not 
so  much  for  the  capitalists  as  for  the  Social  De- 
mocracy, to  which  nothing  can  be  more  welcome 
than  such  clumsy  tomfoolery  that  can  only  serve 
to  enlighten  the  workmen  and  weaken  the  veter- 
ans' associations.  The  latter  are  expelling  more 
systematically  than  ever  not  only  the  Social  Demo- 
crats, but  all  of  their  members  belonging  to  trade 
unions  pervaded  by  the  spirit  of  the  modern  labor 
movement.  In  the  smaller  places,  no  doubt,  they 
create  temporary  difficulties  for  the  unions  by  such 
methods,  as  they  hold  their  members  not  only  by 
means  of  the  usual  parades  and  carousals,  but  also 
by  certain  material  advantages  which  have  often 
been  acquired  through  the  payment  of  consider- 
able dues. 

The  activities  of  the  veterans'  associations  are 
energetically  promoted  by  the  courts  of  class-jus- 
tice and  the  administrative  authorities,  who  still 
have  the  courage  to  take  up  the  grotesque  position 
that  these  clubs,  which  betray  their  political  propa- 
gandist character  at  every  turn,  are  to  be  treated 


160  MILITARISM 

as  non-political  organizations.  That  is  a  help 
which  those  organs  of  the  capitalist  state  must 
render  militarism  if  only  for  reasons  of  solidarity 
and  in  the  interest  of  the  common  greater  purpose, 
the  protection  of  the  capitalist  order  of  society. 

THE  ARMY  AS  A  WEAPON  AGAINST  THE  PROLETA- 
RIAT IN  THE  POLITICAL  STRUGGLE,  OR  THE 
RULE  OF  THE  CANNON. 

Just  as  the  political  struggle  is  the  highest,  most 
concentrated  form  of  the  class-struggle,  the  direct 
and  indirect  political  interference  in  the  class- 
struggle  by  militarism,  that  most  concentrated 
manifestation  of  political  power,  shows  the  activ- 
ities of  militarism  in  their  highest,  most  concen- 
trated form.  In  this  respect  militarism  operates 
in  the  first  place  as  an  economic  power,  as  a  pro- 
ducer and  consumer.  The  ruthless  exclusion  of 
all  Social  Democrats  and  workmen  suspected  of 
sympathizing  with  them  from  the  military  work- 
shops, of  Spandau,  for  instance;  the  practice  of 
handing  over  the  workmen  subject  to  military  in- 
fluence to  the  absolute  control  of  the  reactionary 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  161 

parties,  particularly  to  the  anti-socialist  union,  the 
black  hundreds  of  Germany;  the  complete  isola- 
tion of  those  workmen  from  even  the  slightest  con- 
tact with  the  Social  Democracy:  all  this  demon- 
strates how  perfectly  militarism  has  comprehended 
its  chief  task,  that  of  protecting  the  capitalists, 
and  how  it  performs  it  with  professional  smart- 
ness. In  this  respect  no  Krupp,  no  Stumm  "  is 
fit  to  hold  a  candle  to  militarism,  which  even  sur- 
passes those  whose  interests  it  looks  after  in  the 
energetic  manner  in  which  those  interests  are  cared 
for.  In  the  military  work-shops  of  Spandau,  for 
instance,  the  influence  of  the  anti-socialist  union 
is  such  as  to  make  that  organization  positively  the 
keeper  of  every  workman's  conscience  in  the  royal 
factories,  and  it  is  simply  for  that  organization  to 
decide  whether  a  workman  is  to  be  dismissed. 
Another  striking  proof  of  that  statement  was  fur- 
nished by  the  incidents  connected  with  the  dis- 
missal of  the  committee  of  a  harmless  society  of 
unskilled  laborers  of  the  military  shops  in  the 

11  A  great  German  iron-master  who  was  notorious  for  his 
reactionary  views  and  his  patriarchial  ideas  on  industrial  life. 
[TRANSLATOR.] 


162  MILITARISM 

summer  of  1906.  A  considerable  influence,  which 
is  now,  however,  rapidly  decreasing,  is  exercised 
by  militarism  by  means  of  a  boycott  directed 
against  all  those  saloon  keepers  whose  places  are 
used  by  workmen's  societies  or  associations  even 
slightly  suspected  of  Social  Democratic  sympa- 
thies. By  that  boycott  it  kills  two  birds  with  one 
stone.  It  protects  the  soldiers  as  much  as  possi- 
ble from  coming  into  contact  with  the  poison  of 
revolution  (that,  by  the  way,  is  part  of  the  chapter 
on  military  pedagogy).  In  the  second  place,  it 
makes  it  harder  for  the  workmen  to  procure  meet- 
ing places,  as  the  policy  is  often  carried  out  syste- 
matically so  as  to  prevent  the  workmen  from  rent- 
ing any  halls  at  all.  In  Berlin  that  kind  of  boy- 
cott has  proved  impracticable  and  has  been  nearly 
done  away  with  for  that  reason,  but  our  comrades 
in  the  smaller  places  have  had  no  little  to  suffer 
from  that  policy  of  pin  pricks,  which  is  naturally 
also  directed  against  the  proletariat  in  its  economic 
conflicts. 

But  these  are  merely  "the  little  wee  ones''  of 
its  tricks.     Militarism  is  not  content  with  taking 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  163 

part  in  its  tenacious  and  dashing  manner  in  the 
intricate  political  guerilla  warfare  of  every  day;  it 
has  infinitely  higher  aspirations.  It  knows  itself 
to  be  the  most  important  and  strongest  pillar  of 
throne  and  altar  in  all  the  great  and  greatest,  se- 
vere and  severest  conflicts  of  capitalist  reaction 
against  the  revolution,  and  it  has  thrown  its  weight 
into  the  scales  in  all  the  previous  great  revolution- 
ary movements.  Brief  references  will  suffice. 
We  have  already  referred  to  the  frightful  laurels 
earned  by  capitalist  militarism  in  its  battles  with 
the  Parisian  proletariat  in  the  month  of  July, 
1830,  in  June,  1848,  and  in  the  month  of  May, 
1871.  We  have  also  mentioned  the  provocation 
to  riot,  staged  by  "Napoleon  the  Little,"  on  De- 
cember 2,  1852.  The  butchering  of  Chartists  at 
Newport  and  Birmingham  in  1839,  when  10  peo- 
ple were  killed  and  50  wounded,  deserves  our 
special  interest  because  it  happened  in  England — 
"Et  tu,  Brute!"  For  two  years  Russia  has  been 
under  military  law  of  varying  degrees  of  severity 
and  given  up,  for  the  protection  of  the  Czar's  bar- 
baric rule  of  the  knout  and  the  cruel  suppression  of 


164  MILITARISM 

the  movement  for  liberty,  to  the  fists,  whips,  sa- 
bres, rifles  and  guns  of  the  brutal  soldiery  that  is 
about  to  turn  that  unhappy  country  into  a  great 
cemetery;  and  it  is  only  the  growing  revolutionary 
development  and  the  corresponding  disintegration 
of  the  army  (which  necessarily  keeps  pace  with 
the  energy  of  the  revolutionary  forces)  that  make 
it  certain  that  such  a  "Christian,"  but  also  sui- 
cidal project  will  not  be  realized.  However,  Rus- 
sia can  be  considered  only  with  great  qualifications 
in  an  examination  of  the  capitalist  countries,  as 
has  been  stated  several  times  before. 

Of  importance  is  the  part  played  by  the  stand- 
ing army  in  the  first  great  Belgian  suffrage  fight 
and  that  played  by  the  civic  guard,  that  specifically 
militaristic  class-struggle  organization  of  the  bour- 
geoisie, in  the  second  great  Belgian  suffrage  fight  in 
1902. 

Apart  from  the  calling-out  of  troops  against  the 
workmen  who  demonstrated  in  the  Vienna  Prater 
on  May  i,  1896,  and  the  events  of  Prague,  Vienna 
and  Glatz  (1897),  of  Lemberg  and  Trieste 
(1902)  which  were  treated  of  before,  Austria  has 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  165 

furnished  another  notable  brilliant  example  of 
militaristic  political  action  on  a  large  scale  in  the 
electoral  struggle  of  1905.  It  is  generally  known 
that  Bohemia  was  on  the  point  of  becoming  the 
scene  of  civil  war.  On  November  5  and  28,  1905, 
when  the  suffrage  demonstrations  took  place,  the 
city  of  Prague  (where  the  miners  were  on  strike, 
too)  was  filled  with  and  surrounded  by  troops; 
the  heights  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  city  were 
occupied  by  artillery,  ready  to  fire;  some  80  per- 
sons were  wounded — by  the  police,  it  is  true. 

The  Italian  events  that  should  find  a  place  here 
have  already  been  mentioned  elsewhere. 

Let  us  now  pass  on  to  Germany  whose  supreme 
war-lord  in  a  sentence  of  universal  fame,  which 
has  been  admitted  as  the  most  effective  of  weapons 
to  the  arsenal  of  the  anti-militarist  propaganda  of 
all  countries,  supplied  the  soldiers  with  such  a 
peculiar  interpretation  of  the  fourth  command- 
ment, and  who  not  only  made  that  well-known 
speech  against  that  "rabble  of  men"  (he  meant  the 
Socialists)  at  the  guards'  banquet,  on  the  occasion 
of  the  anniversary  of  the  battle  of  Sedan  in  1895, 


166  MILITARISM 

but  also  directed,  on  March  28,  1901,  that  famous 
appeal  to  his  Alexandrian  regiment.  The  mili- 
tary preparations  and  the  exploits  of  General 
Wrangel  by  which,  in  1848  and  1849,  the  German 
revolutionary  movement,  three-quarters  betrayed 
and  entirely  left  in  the  lurch  by  the  bourgeoisie, 
was  overwhelmed  and  basely  robbed  of  its  birth- 
right, were  meant  for  the  proletariat  as  such,  as 
being  then  the  only  sound  pillar  of  the  "constitu- 
tion." We  further  remind  the  reader  of  the 
Boyen-Lotzen  chain  affair  of  September,  1870,  and 
the  ravings  of  Bismarck  and  Puttkamer  in  which 
those  gentlemen  of  the  nineteenth  century,  at  the 
time  of  the  shameful  anti-socialist  law,  anticipated 
and  longed  for  an  opportunity  when  the  working 
people,  driven  to  revolution,  could  be  sabred,  shot 
and  shelled  to  pieces  in  the  dashing,  correct,  sports- 
manlike military  fashion.12  The  military  consig- 

12  Ludwigshafen  in  the  Palatinate  was  literally  occupied  by 
troops  on  the  Sunday  preceding  the  Reichstag  elections  of 
1887,  and  only  the  self-possession  of  the  Social  Democrats 
prevented  the  rifles  from  going  off.  Of  interest  in  this  con- 
nection is  an  utterance  by  the  German  Emperor  which  is  en- 
tered under  December  12,  1889,  in  Hohenlohe's  reminiscences : 
"then  (when  the  Socal  Democrats  had  the  majority  in  the  Ber- 
lin city  council)  they  would  plunder  the  bourgeoisie ;  it  was  all 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  167 

nations  during  May-day  demonstrations 1?t  and 
Reichstag  elections  remain  very  well-known  up  to 
these  days;  very  well-known  are  also  the  inci- 
dents accompanying  the  suffrage  theft  committed 
against  the  Saxon  people  in  1896,  and  the  part  the 
military  played  in  the  "pacification"  of  the  Saxon 
populace  in  1905  and  1906.  During  the  Ham- 
burg election  parades  in  November,  1905,  on  "Red 
Wednesday,"  the  military,  which  consists  of  Ham- 
burgers, was  kept  in  the  background ;  the  sabre  and 
revolver  of  the  police  sufficed;  the  result  of  their 
work  were  the  two  corpses  which  decorated  the 
streets  of  the  free  Hansa  city. 

However,  it  was  the  2ist  day  of  January,  1906, 
which  showed  the  bulwark  of  capitalism  in  its  full 
splendor.  He  who  on  that  day,  in  the  quiet  of 
"holy"  sabbath,  saw  the  guns  that  were  rattling 
along  in  the  streets  of  Berlin  might  have  looked 

one  to  him,  he  would  have  the  castle  loop-holed  and  watch 
them  pillage;  then  the  bourgeois  would  be  forced  to  implore 
him  to  help  them." 

"The  first  May -day  demonstration  (1890)  deserves  par- 
ticular attention  as  the  "military  party"  (Hohenlohe's  remin- 
iscences, September  14,  1893)  then  wanted  very  much  to  use 
the  occasion  for  a  bloody  settlement  with  the  troublesome  and 
hated  Social  Democracy. 


i68  MILITARISM 

into  the  very  heart  of  militarism.  That  rattling 
of  cannons  still  rings  in  our  ears  and  encourages 
us  to  proceed  with  our  fight  against  militarism 
with  indefatigable  persistence  and  unsparing  ruth- 
lessness. 

On  January  21,  1906,  the  military  interference 
was  brought  about  by  a  demonstration  against  the 
infamous  Prussian  franchise.  We  know,  how- 
ever, that  our  militarism  will  be  just  as  ready  to 
slash  and  shoot  if  the  issue  were  the  overthrow  of 
the  imperial  constitution  in  the  reactionary  inter- 
est by  a  coup  d'etat.  The  latest  disclosures  of 
Hohenlohe  and  Delbruck  have  shown  that  Bis- 
marck, in  1890,  was  on  the  point  of  dispersing  the 
Reichstag,  doing  away  with  the  Reichstag  suffrage, 
driving  the  proletarian  masses  into  the  street  in 
front  of  the  mouths  of  rifles  and  cannon,  smashing 
the  defenceless  ranks  of  the  people  to  crush  the 
Social  Democracy,  so  as  to  erect  with  blood  and 
iron  on  the  lacerated  proletarian  bodies  a  strong- 
hold of  Bismarckian  and  junker  reaction.  We 
have  also  heard  that  the  German  Emperor  could 
not  be  had  for  that  plan  because  he  wanted  first 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  169 

"to  redress  the  legitimate  grievances  of  the  work- 
men, and  wanted  at  least  to  see  everything  done 
to  fulfil  their  legitimate  demands."  We  know 
that  the  views  of  the  workmen  and  the  ruling 
classes  as  to  what  demands  of  the  workers  are 
legitimate  are  entirely  different,  that  the  hostility 
shown  to  the  Reichstag  suffrage  (to  the  most 
vehement  opponents  of  which  also  belonged  the 
ex-communist  Miquel,  as  the  Hohenlohe  memoirs 
have  disclosed)  is  continually  gathering  in  strength 
at  least  in  very  influential  North  German  circles, 
and  that  thus  the  danger  of  a  "military  solution" 
of  the  social  question  by  rifle  and  cannon  appears 
to  be  nearer  than  ever  to-day.  Should  the  chief 
of  the  general  staff,  Helmut  von  Moltke,  be  ap- 
pointed Chancellor,  as  was  recently  reported,  it 
would  signify  to  all  appearances  a  victory  of  the 
notorious  military  court  party.14 

14  This  coming  man  is  characterized  by  the  Berlin  Tageblatt 
as  follows:  "Helmut  von  Moltke  is  considered  a  pronounced 
reactionary,  a  quality  tempered  with  a  certain  soldierly  frank- 
ness and  buoyancy,  but  he  is  also  said  to  have  spiritualistic  in- 
clinations. He  is  not  at  all  a  man  of  theory,  but  rather  a 
dashing  fighter  who  also  possesses  the  'courage  of  coolness' 
to  carry  on  politics  with  the  slashing  sabre  and  the  shooting 
rifle."  So  here  we  find  at  last  the  qualities  desired  by  our  vio- 
lent reactionaries  all  in  one  heap ! 


iyo  MILITARISM 

There  has  never  been  in  the  world's  history  a 
lack  of  "grape-shot  princes,"  15  grape-shot  junkers 
and  grape-shot  generals.  One  ought  to  be  pre- 
pared for  everything.  There  is  no  time  to  be  lost. 

VETERANS'  ASSOCIATIONS  IN  THE  POLITICAL 
STRUGGLE. 

It  is  clear  to  everybody  that  the  veterans'  asso- 
ciations are  very  intensely  engaged  in  political  ac- 
tivities, but  the  German  Justitia  has  not  yet  been 
able  to  see  it  through  the  bandage  that  covers  her 
eyes.  Everybody  knows,  too,  how  they  are  mobil- 
ized at  elections  and  how  they  force  their  members 
to  leave  the  political  organizations  of  the  opposi- 
tion. Mention  must  be  made  of  their  "loyal" 
practice  of  trying  to  prevent  the  class-conscious 
workers  from  renting  halls  for  meetings.  Two 
facts  of  recent  date  should  be  especially  noted,  viz., 
the  boycott  resolved  upon  (October,  1906)  by  the 
"Association  of  Former  Soldiers  of  the  Sixteenth 


15  Grape-shot  prince  was  the  name  given  the  Prince  of  Prus- 
sia, the  later  Emperor  William  I.,  who  was  the  head  of  the 
military  camarilla  that  tried  to  crush  and  finally  succeeded  in 
crushing  the  revolutionary  movement  in  Germany  in  1848  and 
1849.  [TRANSLATOR.] 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  171 

Army  Corps  of  Duisburg-Beek"  against  the  Kaiser- 
hof  Hotel  at  Duisburg  for  having  let  its  hall  for 
a  miners'  meeting,  and  the  expulsion  from  Saxon 
veterans'  associations  of  proprietors  of  saloons  and 
halls  who  rent  their  rooms  to  labor  organizations. 
In  the  smaller  places  such  fighting  methods  are  of 
no  little  efficacy;  employed  against  well  organized 
workmen  they  are  useless,  however. 

MILITARISM,    A    MENACE    TO    PEACE. 

International  political  strains  can  even  today  be 
produced  by  nationalistic  antagonistic  principles; 
by  the  necessity  of  national  expansion  in  conse- 
quence of  the  increase  in  population;  by  the  neces- 
sity of  annexing  territories  with  natural  resources 
for  the  purpose  of  increasing  the  national  wealth 
(i.e.,  the  wealth  of  the  ruling  classes)  and  ren- 
dering the  state  as  self-dependent  as  possible  in 
point  of  production  (a  natural  complementary 
tendency  arising  from  the  policy  of  protection,  a 
tendency  which,  however,  can  be  only  of  the  slight- 
est importance  in  face  of  the  international  divi- 
sion of  labor  which  is  establishing  itself  ever  more 


172  MILITARISM 

vigorously  and  widely) ;  by  the  necessity  of  fa- 
cilitating traffic  in  the  interior  or  with  foreign 
countries  (for  instance,  by  acquiring  navigable 
rivers,  sea  ports,  etc.),  traffic  being  the  means  by 
which  the  metabolism  of  the  economic  body,  trade, 
is  carried  on ;  by  antagonisms  arising  from  a  differ- 
ence in  general  civilization,  particularly  also  dif- 
ferences in  the  stage  of  political  development. 
But  the  most  important  political  strains  that  can 
nowadays  lead  to  warlike  complications  arise,  as 
has  been  already  stated  above,  through  the  compe- 
tition of  the  various  countries  in  the  economic 
field,  through  the  world  trade,  world  politics  with 
all  its  complications,  especially  colonization.  The 
persons  on  whose  account  those  strains  chiefly  arise 
are  the  powerful  expansionist  capitalists  of  indus- 
try and  commerce,  who  may  be  said  to  have  an 
interest  in  a  successful  war. 

It  must,  however,  be  admitted  that  the  existence 
of  the  standing  armies,  which  represent  militarism 
in  its  most  pronounced  form,  is  in  itself  a  menace 
to  international  peace,  an  independent  danger  of 
war,  ThatTis>rue  even  if  we  leave  out  of  account 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  173 

the  argument  that  the  increase  of  military  burdens, 
that  Archimedean  screw,  can  produce  in  a  country 
a  disposition  not  to  let  a  favorable  moment  of 
military  superiority  pass  unused,  or  to  bring  about 
a  military  decision  which  is  thought  to  be  neces- 
sary in  any  case,  before  any  further  unfavorable 
movement  in  the  relative  military  strength  has 
taken  place.  Such  a  disposition,  as  is  known,  was 
not  without  influence  in  France  during  the  latest 
Morocco  conflict,  but  it  is  always  more  decisive 
for  the  moment  at  which  the  war  breaks  out  than 
for  the  outbreak  itself.  But  the  standing  army 
produces,  as  does  indeed  on  a  much  smaller  scale 
also  the  militia,  a  modern  caste  of  warriors,  a 
caste  of  persons  who  have  been  trained  for  war 
from  infancy,  as  it  were,  a  privileged  caste  of 
conquistadores  that  seeks  adventure  and  promotion 
in  war.  To  these  must  be  added  the  groups  that 
feather  their  particular  nests  during  a  war — the 
manufacturers  of  and  traders  in  arms,  munitions, 
warships,  horses,  material  for  equipment  and 
clothing,  provisions  and  means  of  transportation, 
in  short,  the  army  contractors,  who  exist  of  course 


174  MILITARISM 

also,  but  in  smaller  numbers,  in  countries  having 
a  militia.  Both  the  groups  who  have  a  specific 
interest  in  war,  in  the  making  of  war,  viz.,  the 
officers  who  love  adventure  and  the  army  contrac- 
tors whose  interest  is  quite  independent  of  the 
success  of  the  war,  are  composed  of  people  of  con- 
sequence. They  are  related  to  the  highest  func- 
tionaries of  the  state,  they  have  great  influence 
with  the  men  with  whom  rests  the  formal  decision 
about  war  and  peace.  They  let  no  opportunity 
go  by  without  trying  to  convert  that  influence 
(which  in  most  cases  they  have  acquired  only 
through  the  exploitation  of  militarism)  into 
gleaming  gold,  sacrificing  hecatombs  of  prole- 
tarians on  the  altar  of  their  profit.  In  the  role 
of  colonial  enthusiasts  they  push  the  "beloved  fa- 
therland" into  dangerous,  costly  adventures  which 
prove  exceedingly  profitable  for  themselves,  only 
to  save  that  same  fatherland  afterwards  at  other 
people's  expense  in  the  role  of  naval  enthusiasts 
in  a  manner  which  brings  to  them  again  exceed- 
ingly great  profits. 

The  fight  against  the  standing  armies  and  the 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  175 

jingoist  militaristic  spirit  is  a  fight  against  the  dan- 
ger threatening  the  peace  of  the  nations.  The  old 
adage,  "Si  vis  pacem,  para  bellum"  may  be  true 
for  the  individual  state  surrounded  by  militaristic 
states,  but  it  is  in  no  wise  true  for  the  capitalist 
countries  taken  collectively,  with  which  the  inter- 
national propaganda  of  the  Social  Democracy  is 
concerned.  Still  less  does  that  adage  prove  the 
necessity  of  preparing  for  war  in  the  particular 
form  of  the  standing  army,  to  which  on  the  con- 
trary exactly  the  opposite  aphorism  applies — "Si 
vis  bellum  para  pacem" :  there  is  no  greater  danger 
of  war  than  such  a  peace  insurance !  It  is  true  that 
for  the  aggressive  economic-political  imperialism 
of  our  days  the  standing  army  is  the  suitable  form 
of  war  preparations. 

As  truly  as  the  maintenance  of  international 
peace  is  in  the  interest  of  the  international  prole- 
tariat and  beyond  that  in  the  interest  of  the  civil- 
ization of  the  whole  of  humanity,  as  truly  is  the 
struggle  against  militarism — that  epitome  of  na- 
tional hatreds,  that  sum  and  extract  of  all  peace 
disturbing  tendencies  of  capitalism,  in  short,  that 


176  MILITARISM 

serious  danger  of  world  war — a  fight  for  civiliza- 
tion which  the  proletariat  is  proud  to  wage,  which 
it  must  wage  in  its  very  own  interest  and  which 
to  wage  no  other  class  as  such  (leaving  out  of  ac- 
count some  well-intentioned  enthusiasts  who  only 
prove  the  rule)  is  even  remotely  so  much  interested 
in. 

But  militarism  also  disturbs  the  national  peace, 
not  only  by  the  brutalizing  effect  it  has  upon  the 
people,  the  heavy  economic  burdens  it  imposes 
upon  the  people  and  the  pressure  of  taxes  and 
tariff  thus  brought  about ;  not  only  by  the  corrup- 
tion accompanying  it  (see  the  cases  of  Wormann, 
Fischer, von Tippelskirch, Podbielski  and  friends); 
not  only  by  dividing  into  two  castes  a  people  al- 
ready sufficiently  oppressed  by  class-division;  not 
only  by  its  practice  of  maltreating  soldiers  and 
its  system  of  dispensing  justice :  but  above  all  by 
being  a  powerful  obstacle  in  the  way  of  every 
kind  of  progress,  by  being  an  ingenious  and  highly 
efficient  instrument  for  closing  by  force  the  valve 
of  the  social  steam-boiler.  He  who  believes  that 
the  progress  of  humanity  is  inevitable  must  see  in 


SOME  CARDINAL  SINS  177 

the  existence  of  militarism  the  most  important 
obstacle  in  the  way  of  a  peaceful  and  continuous 
evolution,  to  him  an  unbroken  militarism  must 
mean  the  necessity  of  a  blood-red  dawn  of  the 
capitalist  idols — a  capitalist  "Gotzendamme- 
rung."  16 

THE    OBSTACLES    OF    THE    PROLETARIAN 
REVOLUTION. 

To  do  away  with  militarism  or  to  weaken  it  as 
much  as  possible  is  thus  a  question  of  vital  im- 
portance in  waging  the  struggle  for  political  eman- 
cipation, the  form  and  manner  of  which  milita- 
rism debases  in  a  sense,  therefore  influencing  their 
character  in  a  decisive  fashion.  It  is  all  the  more 
a  vital  question  as  the  superiority  of  the  army  to 
the  unarmed  people,  the  proletariat,  is  far  greater 
to-day  than  it  was  ever  before  on  account  of  the 
highly  developed  military  arts  and  strategy,  the 
enormous  size  of  the  armies,  the  unfavorable  local 


"The  German  title  of  Nietzsche's  "The  Twilight  of  the 
Idols."  It  is  a  titular  parody  on  Wagner's  "Gotterdamme- 
rung."  [TRANSLATOR.] 


178  MILITARISM 

distribution  of  the  various  classes  and  the  relative 
economic  strength  of  proletariat  and  bourgeoisie 
which  shows  the  proletariat  in  a  particularly  dis- 
advantageous position,  wherefore  alone  a  future 
proletarian  revolution  will  be  far  more  difficult 
than  any  revolution  that  has  taken  place  hitherto. 
It  is  important  always  to  remember  that  in  the 
bourgeois  revolution  the  driving  force,  the  revolu- 
tionary bourgeoisie,  was  the  dominant  economic 
class  long  before  the  revolution  in  the  narrower 
sense  broke  out;  that  the  bourgeoisie  found  a 
numerous  class,  economically  dependent  on  it  and 
subject  to  its  political  influence,  which  it  could 
send  into  the  fire  and  make  a  cat's  paw  of;  that 
the  bourgeoisie  had  bought  up,  as  it  were,  the  I 
old  junk  of  feudalism  before  smashing  and  throw- 
ing it  on  the  dumping  heap,  whereas  all  that  the  . 
bourgeois  have  acquired  by  wealth  the  proletarians 
have  to  conquer  by  hunger  and  with  their  bare 
bodies. 


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